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THE 

INNOCENTS  ABROAD 

OR 

THE  NEW  PILGRIMS'  PROGRESS 

BEING  SOME  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  STEAMSHIP  QUAKER  CITY'S 
PLEASURE  EXCURSION  TO  EUROPE  AND  THE  HOLY  LAND 


BY 

MARK  TWAIN 

(Samuel  L.  Clemens) 

IN  TWO  VOLUMES 
VOL.  I 


1817 


HARPER    &    ROW,    PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK,    HAGERSTOWN,    SAN  FRANCISCO,    LONDON 


The  Innocents  Abroad.    Vol.  I 


Copyright.  1869,  1897,  and  1899,  by  The  American  Publishing  Company 
Copyright,  191 1,  by  Clara  Gabrilowitsch 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
Thh  Innocents  Abroad.    Vol.  II 


Copyright,  1869.  1897,  and   1899,  by  The  American  Publishing  Company 


Copyright,  191 1,  by  Clara  Gabrilowitsch 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
76  77  78     26    25    24   23    22 


TO  MY  MOST  PATIENT  READER  AND  MOST 
CHARITABLE  CRITIC.  MY  AGED  MOTHER. 
THIS  VOLUME   IS   AFFECTIONATELY   INSCRIBED 


^uooSHo^ 


CONTENTS 


i. 
ii. 

in. 

IV. 

v. 

VI. 
VII. 

«=». 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII 


XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 


Preface 

We  Go  to  See  Kings i 

Our  Paddle-wheels  Go  'Round 10 

Fine  Day  at  Sea?    "Oh,  My!" 16 

Our  Singing  Provokes  Head-winds 21 

The  Watch  that  Couldn't  Keep  Up      ...    .  31 

The  Poor,  Shiftless,  Lazy  Azoreans     ....  39 

Gibraltar — a  "Gob"  on  a  Shingle 48 

Morocco,  Where  Riches  Have  Stings  ....  64 

The  Frenchman's  Sacred  Cat-mat 72 

The  Marseillaises  Misunderstand  Us  ...     .  So 

The  Melancholy  Chateau  d'If go 

France  is  a  Bewitching  Garden 97 

Napoleon  and  Abdul  Aziz  See  Us hi 

We  Shudder  at  the  Can-can 124 

Down  with  the  Dastardly  Abelard!     .     .     .     .  134 

Versailles  Entrances  Us 149 

Oh,  the  Superb   Genoese   Ladies!    Genoa— Su- 
perb but  Tomb-like 156 

Milan — a  Poem  in  Marble 169 

Who  Glorifies  Poor  Mr.  Laura? 180 

Como?     Pshaw!    See  Lake  Tahoe 198 

Luigi  to  the  Rescue!    Whoop! 207 

Gondolas  are  Water-hearses 218 

We  Master  the  Old  Masters 232 

Galileo's  Pendulum  in  the  Duomo 250 

Why  Don't  They  Rob  Their  Churches?    ...  262 

Rome  and  St.  Peters  Overwhelm  Us    ...     .  274 

Rare  Sport — Guying  the  Guides  .««•••  296 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  a  record  of  a  pleasure  trip.  If  it 
were  a  record  of  a  solemn  scientific  expedition,  it 
would  have  about  it  that  gravity,  that  profundity, 
and  that  impressive  incomprehensibility  which  are 
so  proper  to  works  of  that  kind,  and  withal  so  attrac- 
tive. Yet  notwithstanding  it  is  only  a  record  of  a 
picnic,  it  has  a  purpose,  which  is,  to  suggest  to  the 
reader  how  he  would  be  likely  to  see  Europe  and  the 
East  if  he  looked  at  them  with  his  own  eyes  instead 
of  the  eyes  of  those  who  traveled  in  those  countries 
before  him.  I  make  small  pretense  of  showing  any 
one  how  he  ought  to  look  at  objects  of  interest  be- 
yond the  sea — other  books  do  that,  and  therefore, 
even  if  I  were  competent  to  do  it,  there  is  no  need. 

I  offer  no  apologies  for  any  departures  from  the 
usual  style  of  travel-writing  that  may  be  charged 
against  me — for  I  think  I  have  seen  with  impartial 
eyes,  and  I  am  sure  I  have  written  at  least  honestly, 
whether  wisely  or  not. 

In  this  volume  I  have  used  portions  of  letters  which 
I  wrote  for  the  Daily  Alta  California,  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, the  proprietors  of  that  journal  having  waived 
their  rights  and  given  me  the  necessary  permission. 
I  have  also  inserted  portions  of  several  letters  written 
for  the  New  York  Tribune  and  the  New  York  Herald. 

THE  AUTHOR. 

San  Francisco. 


THE 
INNOCENTS    ABROAD 


CHAPTER  I 

FOR  months  the  great  Pleasure  Excursion  to 
Europe  and  the  Holy  Land  was  chatted  about 
in  the  newspapers  everywhere  in  America,  and  dis- 
cussed at  countless  firesides.  It  was  a  novelty  in  the 
way  of  excursions — its  like  had  not  been  thought 
of  before,  and  it  compelled  that  interest  which  attrac- 
tive novelties  always  command.  It  was  to  be  a  pic- 
nic on  a  gigantic  scale.  The  participants  in  it,  in- 
stead of  freighting  an  ungainly  steam  ferry-boat  with 
youth  and  beauty  and  pies  and  doughnuts,  and  pad- 
dling up  some  obscure  creek  to  disembark  upon  a 
grassy  lawn  and  wear  themselves  out  with  a  long 
summer  day's  laborious  frolicking  under  the  impres- 
sion that  it  was  fun,  were  to  sail  away  in  a  great 
steamship  with  flags  flying  and  cannon  pealing,  and 
take  a  royal  holiday  beyond  the  broad  ocean,  in 
many  a  strange  clime  and  in  many  a  land  renowned 
in  history!     They  were  to  sail  for  months  over  the 

i 


MARK    TWAIN 

breezy  Atlantic  and  the  sunny  Mediterranean;  they 
were  to  scamper  about  the  decks  by  day,  filling  the 
ship  with  shouts  and  laughter — or  read  novels  and 
poetry  in  the  shade  of  the  smoke-stacks,  or  watch 
for  the  jellyfish  and  the  nautilus,  over  the  side,  and 
the  shark,  the  whale,  and  other  strange  monsters  of 
the  deep;  and  at  night  they  were  to  dance  in  the 
open  air,  on  the  upper  deck,  in  the  midst  of  a  ball- 
room that  stretched  from  horizon  to  horizon,  and 
was  domed  by  the  bending  heavens  and  lighted  by 
no  meaner  lamps  than  the  stars  and  the  magnificent 
moon — dance,  and  promenade,  and  smoke,  and  sing, 
and  make  love,  and  search  the  skies  for  constel- 
lations that  never  associate  with  the  "Big  Dipper" 
they  were  so  tired  of:  and  they  were  to  see  the 
ships  of  twenty  navies — the  customs  and  costumes 
of  twenty  curious  peoples — the  great  cities  of  half 
a  world — they  were  to  hobnob  with  nobility  and 
hold  friendly  converse  with  kings  and  princes, 
Grand  Moguls,  and  the  anointed  lords  of  mighty 
empires ! 

It  was  a  brave  conception;  it  was  the  offspring  of 
a  most  ingenious  brain.  It  was  well  advertised,  but 
it  hardly  needed  it :  the  bold  originality,  the  extraor- 
dinary character,  the  seductive  nature,  and  the 
vastness  of  the  enterprise  provoked  comment  every- 
where and  advertised  it  in  every  household  in  the 
land.  Who  could  read  the  program  of  the  excur- 
sion without  longing  to  make  one  of  the  party? 
I  will  insert  it  here.  It  is  almost  as  good  as  a 
map.  As  a  text  for  this  book,  nothing  could  be 
better: 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

EXCURSION    TO    THE    HOLY    LAND,    EGYPT,    THE 

CRIMEA,  GREECE,  AND   INTERMEDIATE 

POINTS   OF   INTEREST. 

Brooklyn,  February  ist,  1867. 

The  undersigned  will  make  an  excursion  as  above  during  the 
coming  season,  and  begs  to  submit  to  you  the  following  pro- 
gram: 

A  first-class  steamer,  to  be  under  his  own  command,  and 
capable  of  accommodating  at  least  one  hundred  and  fifty  cabin 
passengers,  will  be  selected,  in  which  will  be  taken  a  select  com- 
pany, numbering  not  more  than  three-fourths  of  the  ship's 
capacity.  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  this  company 
can  be  easily  made  up  in  this  immediate  vicinity,  of  mutual 
friends  and  acquaintances. 

The  steamer  will  be  provided  with  every  necessary  comfort, 
including  library  and  musical  instruments. 

An  experienced  physician  will  be  on  board. 

Leaving  New  York  about  June  ist,  a  middle  and  pleasant 
route  will  be  taken  across  the  Atlantic,  and,  passing  through  the 
group  of  Azores,  St.  Michael  will  be  reached  in  about  ten  days. 
A  day  or  two  will  be  spent  here,  enjoying  the  fruit  and  wild 
scenery  of  these  islands,  and  the  voyage  continued,  and  Gibraltar 
reached  in  three  or  four  days. 

A  day  or  two  will  be  spent  here  in  looking  over  the  wonderful 
subterraneous  fortifications,  permission  to  visit  these  galleries 
being  readily  obtained. 

From  Gibraltar,  running  along  the  coasts  of  Spain  and  France, 
Marseilles  will  be  reached  in  three  days.  Here  ample  time  will 
be  given  not  only  to  look  over  the  city,  which  was  founded  six 
hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era,  and  its  artificial  port,  the 
inest  of  the  kind  in  the  Mediterranean,  but  to  visit  Paris  during 
the  Great  Exhibition;  and  the  beautiful  city  of  Lyons,  lying 
intermediate,  from  the  heights  of  which,  on  a  clear  day,  Mont 
Blanc  and  the  Alps  can  be  distinctly  seen.  Passengers  who  may 
wish  to  extend  the  time  at  Paris  can  do  so,  and,  passing  down 
through  Switzerland,  rejoin  the  steamer  at  Genoa. 

From  Marseilles  to  Genoa  is  a  run  of  one  night.  The  ex- 
cursionists will  have  an  opportunity  to  look  over  this,  the  "mag- 
nificent city  of  palaces,"  and  visit  the  birthplace  of  Columbus, 
twelve  miles  off,  over  a  beautiful  road  built  by  Napoleon  I. 

3 


MARK    TWAIN 

From  this  point,  excursions  may  be  made  to  Milan,  Lakes  Como 
and  Maggiore,  or  to  Milan,  Verona  (famous  for  its  extraordinary 
fortifications),  Padua,  and  Venice.  Or,  if  passengers  desire  to 
visit  Palma  (famous  for  Correggio's  frescoes)  and  Bologna,  they 
can  by  rail  go  on  to  Florence,  and  rejoin  the  steamer  at  Leghorn, 
thus  spending  about  three  weeks  amid  the  cities  most  famous 
for  art  in  Italy. 

From  Genoa  the  run  to  Leghorn  will  be  made  along  the  coast 
in  one  night,  and  time  appropriated  to  this  point  in  which  to 
visit  Florence,  its  palaces  and  galleries;  Pisa,  its  Cathedral  and 
"Leaning  Tower,"  and  Lucca  and  its  baths  and  Roman  amphi- 
theater; Florence,  the  most  remote,  being  distant  by  rail  about 
sixty  miles. 

From  Leghorn  to  Naples  (calling  at  Civita  Vecchia  to  land  any 
who  may  prefer  to  go  to  Rome  from  that  point)  the  distance  will 
be  made  in  about  thirty-six  hours;  the  route  will  lay  along  the 
coast  of  Italy,  close  by  Caprera,  Elba,  and  Corsica.  Arrange- 
ments have  been  made  to  take  on  board  at  Leghorn  a  pilot  for 
Caprera,  and,  if  practicable,  a  call  will  be  made  there  to  visit 
the  home  of  Garibaldi. 

Rome  (by  rail),  Herculaneum,  Pompeii,  Vesuvius,  Virgil's 
tomb,  and  possibly,  the  ruins  of  Paestum,  can  be  visited,  as  well 
as  the  beautiful  surroundings  of  Naples  and  its  charming  bay. 

The  next  point  of  interest  will  be  Palermo,  the  most  beautiful 
city  of  Sicily,  which  will  be  reached  in  one  night  from  Naples. 
A  day  will  be  spent  here,  and,  leaving  in  the  evening,  the  course 
will  be  taken  toward  Athens. 

Skirting  along  the  north  coast  of  Sicily,  passing  through  the 
group  of  ^Eolian  Isles,  in  sight  of  Stromboli  and  Vulcania,  both 
active  volcanoes,  through  the  Straits  of  Messina,  with  "Scylla" 
on  the  one  hand  and  "Charybdis"  on  the  other,  along  the  east 
coast  of  Sicily,  and  in  sight  of  Mount  ^tna,  along  the  south 
coast  of  Italy,  the  west  and  south  coast  of  Greece,  in  sight  of 
ancient  Crete,  up  Athens  Gulf,  and  into  the  Piraeus,  Athens  will 
be  reached  in  two  and  a  half  or  three  days.  After  tarrying  here 
awhile,  the  Bay  of  Salamis  will  be  crossed,  and  a  day  given  to 
Corinth,  whence  the  voyage  will  be  continued  to  Constantinople, 
passing  on  the  way  through  the  Grecian  Archipelago,  the  Dar- 
danelles, the  Sea  of  Marmora,  and  the  mouth  of  the  Golden 
Horn,  and  arriving  in  about  forty-eight  hours  from  Athens. 

After  leaving  Constantinople,  the  way  will  be  taken  out 

4 


THE    INNOCENTS   ABROAD 

through  the  beautiful  Bosphorus,  across  the  Black  Sea  to  Sebas- 
topol  and  Balaklava,  a  run  of  about  twenty-four  hours.  Here 
it  is  proposed  to  remain  two  days,  visiting  the  harbors,  fortifica- 
tions, and  battle-fields  of  the  Crimea;  thence  back  through  the 
Bosphorus,  touching  at  Constantinople  to  take  in  any  who  may 
have  preferred  to  remain  there;  down  through  the  Sea  of  Mar- 
mora and  the  Dardanelles,  along  the  coasts  of  ancient  Troy  and 
Lydia  in  Asia,  to  Smyrna,  which  will  be  reached  in  two  or  two 
and  a  half  days  from  Constantinople.  A  sufficient  stay  will  be 
made  here  to  give  opportunity  of  visiting  Ephesus,  fifty  miles 
distant  by  rail. 

From  Smyrna  toward  the  Holy  Land  the  course  will  lay 
through  the  Grecian  Archipelago,  close  by  the  Isle  of  Patmos, 
along  the  coast  of  Asia,  ancient  Pamphylia,  and  the  Isle  of 
Cyprus.  Beirout  will  be  reached  in  three  days.  At  Beirout 
time  will  be  given  to  visit  Damascus;  after  which  the  steamer 
will  proceed  to  Joppa. 

From  Joppa,  Jerusalem,  the  River  Jordan,  the  Sea  of  Tiberias, 
Nazareth,  Bethany,  Bethlehem,  and  other  points  of  interest  in 
the  Holy  Land  can  be  visited,  and  here  those  who  may  have  pre- 
ferred to  make  the  journey  from  Beirout  through  the  country, 
passing  through  Damascus,  Galilee,  Capernaum,  Samaria,  and 
by  the  River  Jordan  and  Sea  of  Tiberias,  can  rejoin  the  steamer. 

Leaving  Joppa,  the  next  point  of  interest  to  visit  will  be 
Alexandria,  which  will  be  reached  in  twenty-four  hours.  The 
ruins  of  Caesar's  Palace,  Pompey's  Pillar,  Cleopatra's  Needle,  the 
Catacombs,  and  ruins  of  ancient  Alexandria,  will  be  found  worth 
the  visit.  The  journey  to  Cairo,  one  hundred  and  thirty  miles 
by  rail,  can  be  made  in  a  few  hours,  and  from  which  can  be 
visited  the  site  of  ancient  Memphis,  Joseph's  Granaries,  and  thft 
Pyramids. 

From  Alexandria  the  route  will  be  taken  homeward,  calling  at 
Malta,  Cagliari  (in  Sardinia),  and  Palma  (in  Majorca),  all  mag- 
nificent harbors,  with  charming  scenery,  and  abounding  in  fruits. 

A  day  or  two  will  be  spent  at  each  place,  and  leaving  Palma 
in  the  evening,  Valencia  in  Spain  will  be  reached  the  next  morn- 
ing.   A  few  days  will  be  spent  in  this,  the  finest  city  of  Spain. 

From  Valencia,  the  homeward  course  will  be  continued,  skirt- 
ing along  the  coast  of  Spain.  Alicante,  Carthagena,  Palos,  and 
Malaga  will  be  passed  but  a  mile  or  two  distant,  and  Gibraltar 
reached  in  about  twenty-four  hours. 

5 


MARK    TWAIN 

A  stay  of  one  day  will  be  made  here,  and  the  voyage  con- 
tinued to  Madeira,  which  will  be  reached  in  about  three  days. 
Captain  Marryatt  writes:  "I  do  not  know  a  spot  on  the  globe 
which  so  much  astonishes  and  delights  upon  first  arrival  as 
Madeira."  A  stay  of  one  or  two  days  will  be  made  here,  which, 
if  time  permits,  may  be  extended,  and  passing  on  through  the 
islands,  and  probably  in  sight  of  the  Peak  of  Teneriffe,  a  southern 
track  will  be  taken,  and  the  Atlantic  crossed  within  the  latitudes 
of  the  northeast  trade-winds,  where  mild  and  pleasant  weather 
and  a  smooth  sea  can  always  be  expected. 

A  call  will  be  made  at  Bermuda,  which  lies  directly  in  this 
route  homeward,  and  will  be  reached  in  about  ten  days  from 
Madeira,  and  after  spending  a  short  time  with  our  friends  the 
Bermudians,  the  final  departure  will  be  made  for  home,  which 
will  be  reached  in  about  three  days. 

Already,  applications  have  been  received  from  parties  in 
Europe  wishing  to  join  the  Excursion  there. 

The  ship  will  at  all  times  be  a  home,  where  the  excursionists, 
if  sick,  will  be  surrounded  by  kind  friends,  and  have  all  possible 
comfort  and  sympathy. 

Should  contagious  sickness  exist  in  any  of  the  ports  named 
in  the  program,  such  ports  will  be  passed,  and  others  of  in- 
terest substituted. 

The  price  of  passage  is  fixed  at  $1,250,  currency,  for  each  adult 
passenger.  Choice  of  rooms  and  of  seats  at  the  tables  appor- 
tioned in  the  order  in  which  passages  are  engaged,  and  no  pass- 
age considered  engaged  until  ten  per  cent,  of  the  passage  money 
is  deposited  with  the  treasurer. 

Passengers  can  remain  on  board  of  the  steamer  at  all  ports, 
if  they  desire,  without  additional  expense,  and  all  boating  at 
the  expense  of  the  ship. 

All  passages  must  be  paid  for  when  taken,  in  order  that  the 
most  perfect  arrangements  be  made  for  starting  at  the  appointed 
time. 

Applications  for  passage  must  be  approved  by  the  committee 
before  tickets  are  issued,  and  can  be  made  to  the  undersigned. 

Articles  of  interest  or  curiosity,  procured  by  the  passengers 
during  the  voyage,  may  be  brought  home  in  the  steamer  free  of 
charge. 

Five  dollars  per  day,  in  gold,  it  is  believed,  will  be  a  fair  cal- 
culation to  make  for  all  traveling  expenses  on  shore,  and  at  the 

6 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

various  points  where  passengers  may  wish  to  leave  the  steamer 
for  days  at  a  time. 

The  trip  can  be  extended,  and  the  route  changed,  by  unani- 
mous vote  of  the  passengers. 

CHAS.  C.  DUNCAN, 
117  Wall  Street,  New  York. 
R.  R.  G ,  Treasurer. 

Committee  on  Applications. 
J.  T.  H ,  Esq.,        R.  R.  G ,  Esq.,         C.  C.  DUNCAN. 

Committee  on  Selecting  Steamer. 

Capt.  W.  W.  S ,  Surveyor  for  Board  of  Underwriters. 

C  W.  C ,  Consulting  Engineer  for  U.  S.  and  Canada. 

J.  T.  H ,  Esq. 

C.  C.  DUNCAN. 

P.  S. — The  very  beautiful  and  substantial  side-wheel  steam- 
ship Quaker  City  has  been  chartered  for  the  occasion,  and  will 
leave  New  York,  June  8th.  Letters  have  been  issued  by  the 
government  commending  the  party  to  courtesies  abroad. 

What  was  there  lacking  about  that  program,  to 
make  it  perfectly  irresistible?  Nothing,  that  any 
finite  mind  could  discover.  Paris,  England,  Scot- 
land, Switzerland,  Italy— Garibaldi !  The  Grecian 
Archipelago!  Vesuvius!  Constantinople!  Smyrna! 
The  Holy  Land!  Egypt  and  "our  friends  the  Ber- 
tnudians"!  People  in  Europe  desiring  to  join  the 
Excursion — contagious  sickness  to  be  avoided — 
boating  at  the  expense  of  the  ship — physician  on 
board — the  circuit  of  the  globe  to  be  made  if  the 
passengers  unanimously  desired  it — the  company 
to  be  rigidly  selected  by  a  pitiless  "Committee  on 
Applications" — the  vessel  to  be  as  rigidly  selected 
by  as  pitiless  a  "Committee  on  Selecting  Steamer." 
Human  nature  could  not  withstand  these  bewildering 

7 


MARK    TWAIN 

temptations.  I  hurried  to  the  treasurer's  office  and 
deposited  my  ten  per  cent.  I  rejoiced  to  know  that 
a  few  vacant  staterooms  were  still  left.  I  did  avoid 
a  critical  personal  examination  into  my  character,  by 
that  bowelless  committee,  but  I  referred  to  all  the 
people  of  high  standing  I  could  think  of  in  the  com- 
munity who  would  be  least  likely  to  know  anything 
about  me. 

Shortly  a  supplementary  program  was  issued  which 
set  forth  that  the  Plymouth  Collection  of  Hymns 
would  be  used  on  board  the  ship.  I  then  paid  the 
balance  of  my  passage  money. 

I  was  provided  with  a  receipt,  and  duly  and 
officially  accepted  as  an  excursionist.  There  was 
happiness  in  that,  but  it  was  tame  compared  to  the 
novelty  of  being  "select." 

This  supplementary  program  also  instructed  the 
excursionists  to  provide  themselves  with  light  musi- 
cal instruments  for  amusement  in  the  ship;  with 
saddles  for  Syrian  travel;  green  spectacles  and  um- 
brellas; veils  for  Egypt;  and  substantial  clothing 
to  use  in  rough  pilgrimizing  in  the  Holy  Land. 
Furthermore,  it  was  suggested  that  although  the 
ship's  library  would  afford  a  fair  amount  of  reading- 
matter,  it  would  still  be  well  if  each  passenger  would 
provide  himself  with  a  few  guide-books,  a  Bible,  and 
some  standard  works  of  travel.  A  list  was  ap- 
pended, which  consisted  chiefly  of  books  relating 
to  the  Holy  Land,  since  the  Holy  Land  was  part 
of  the  excursion  and  seemed  to  be  its  main  feature. 

Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  to  have  accom- 
panied the  expedition,  but  urgent  duties  obliged  him 

8 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

to  give  up  the  idea.  There  were  other  passengers 
who  could  have  been  spared  better,  and  would  have 
been  spared  more  willingly.  Lieutenant-General 
Sherman  was  to  have  been  of  the  party,  also, 
but  the  Indian  war  compelled  his  presence  on  the 
plains.  A  popular  actress  had  entered  her  name  on 
the  ship's  books,  but  something  interfered,  and  she 
couldn't  go.  The  "Drummer  Boy  of  the  Potomac" 
deserted,  and  lo,  we  had  never  a  celebrity  left! 

However,  we  were  to  have  a  "battery  of  guns" 
from  the  Navy  Department  (as  per  advertisement), 
to  be  used  in  answering  royal  salutes ;  and  the  docu- 
ment furnished  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  which 
was  to  make  "General  Sherman  and  party"  wel- 
come guests  in  the  courts  and  camps  of  the  Old 
World,  was  still  left  to  us,  though  both  document 
and  battery,  I  think,  were  shorn  of  somewhat  of 
their  original  august  proportions.  However,  had 
not  we  the  seductive  program,  still,  with  its  Paris, 
its  Constantinople,  Smyrna,  Jerusalem,  Jericho,  and 
"our  friends  the  Bermudians " ?    What  did  we  care? 


CHAPTER  II 

OCCASIONALLY,  during  the  following  month,  I 
dropped  in  at  117  Wall  Street  to  inquire  how 
the  repairing  and  refurnishing  of  the  vessel  was  com- 
ing on ;  how  additions  to  the  passenger-list  were  aver- 
aging; how  many  people  the  committee  were  de- 
creeing not  "select,"  every  day,  and  banishing  in 
sorrow  and  tribulation.  I  was  glad  to  know  that  we 
were  to  have  a  little  printing-press  on  board  and 
issue  a  daily  newspaper  of  our  own.  I  was  glad  to 
learn  that  our  piano,  our  parlor  organ,  and  our 
melodeon  were  to  be  the  best  instruments  of  the 
kind  that  could  be  had  in  the  market.  I  was  proud 
to  observe  that  among  our  excursionists  were  three 
ministers  of  the  gospel,  eight  doctors,  sixteen  or 
eighteen  ladies,  several  military  and  naval  chieftains 
with  sounding  titles,  an  ample  crop  of  " Professors" 
of  various  kinds,  and  a  gentleman  who  had  "Com- 
missioner of  the  United  States  of  America  to 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa"  thundering  after  his 
name  in  one  awful  blast !  I  had  carefully  prepared 
myself  to  take  rather  a  back  seat  in  that  ship,  be- 
cause of  the  uncommonly  select  material  that  would 
alone  be  permitted  to  pass  through  the  camel's  eye 
of  that  committee  on  credentials;  I  had  schooled 
myself  to  expect  an  imposing  array  of  military  and 

10 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

naval  heroes,  and  to  have  to  set  that  back  seat  still 
further  back  in  consequence  of  it,  maybe;  but  I 
state  frankly  that  I  was  all  unprepared  for  this 
crusher. 

I  fell  under  that  titular  avalanche  a  torn  and 
blighted  thing.  I  said  that  if  that  potentate  must 
go  over  in  our  ship,  why,  I  supposed  he  must — but 
that  to  my  thinking,  when  the  United  States  consid- 
ered it  necessary  to  send  a  dignitary  of  that  tonnage 
across  the  ocean,  it  would  be  in  better  taste,  and 
safer,  to  take  him  apart  and  cart  him  over  in  sections, 
in  several  ships. 

Ah,  if  I  had  only  known,  then,  that  he  was  only 
a  common  mortal,  and  that  his  mission  had  nothing 
more  overpowering  about  it  than  the  collecting  of 
seeds,  and  uncommon  yams  and  extraordinary  cab- 
bages and  peculiar  bullfrogs  for  that  poor,  useless, 
innocent,  mildewed  old  fossil,  the  Smithsonian  In- 
stitute, I  would  have  felt  so  much  relieved. 

During  that  memorable  month  I  basked  in  the  hap- 
piness of  being  for  once  in  my  life  drifting  with  the 
tide  of  a  great  popular  movement.  Everybody  was 
going  to  Europe — I,  too,  was  going  to  Europe. 
Everybody  was  going  to  the  famous  Paris  Exposition 
— I,  too,  was  going  to  the  Paris  Exposition.  The 
steamship  lines  were  carrying  Americans  out  of  the 
various  ports  of  the  country  at  the  rate  of  four  or 
five  thousand  a  week,  in  the  aggregate.  If  I  met  a 
dozen  individuals,  during  that  month,  who  were  not 
going  to  Europe  shortly,  I  have  no  distinct  remem- 
brance of  it  now.  I  walked  about  the  city  a  good 
deal  with  a  young  Mr.  Blucher,  who  was  booked 

ii 


MARK    TWAIN 

for  the  excursion.  He  was  confiding,  good-natured 
unsophisticated,  companionable;  but  he  was  not  a 
man  to  set  the  river  on  fire.  He  had  the  most  ex- 
traordinary notions  about  this  European  exodus,  and 
came  at  last  to  consider  the  whole  nation  as  packing 
up  for  emigration  to  France.  We  stepped  into  a 
store  in  Broadway,  one  day,  where  he  bought  a 
handkerchief,  and  when  the  man  could  not  make 
change,  Mr.  B.  said: 

"Never  mind,  I'll  hand  it  to  you  in  Paris.' ' 

"But  I  am  not  going  to  Paris." 

"How  is — what  did  I  understand  you  to  say?" 

"I  said  I  am  not  going  to  Paris." 

"Not  going  to  Paris!  Not  g —  well  then,  where 
in  the  nation  are  you  going  to?" 

"Nowhere  at  all." 

"Not  anywhere  whatsoever? — not  any  place  on 
earth  but  this?" 

"Not  any  place  at  all  but  just  this — stay  here  all 
summer." 

My  comrade  took  his  purchase  and  walked  out  of 
the  store  without  a  word — walked  out  with  an  in- 
jured look  upon  his  countenance.  Up  the  street 
apiece  he  broke  silence  and  said  impressively:  "It 
was  a  lie — that  is  my  opinion  of  it!" 

In  the  fullness  of  time  the  ship  was  ready  to  re- 
ceive her  passengers.  I  was  introduced  to  the 
young  gentleman  who  was  to  be  my  room-mate,  and 
found  him  to  be  intelligent,  cheerful  of  spirit,  un- 
selfish, full  of  generous  impulses,  patient,  consider- 
ate, and  wonderfully  good  -  natured.  Not  any 
passenger  that  sailed  in  the  Quaker  City  will  with- 

12 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

hold  his  indorsement  of  what  I  have  just  said.  We 
selected  a  stateroom  forward  of  the  wheel,  on  the 
starboard  side,  "below  decks."  It  had  two  berths 
in  it,  a  dismal  dead-light,  a  sink  with  a  wash-bowl  in 
it,  and  a  long  sumptuously  cushioned  locker,  which 
was  to  do  service  as  a  sofa — partly,  and  partly  as  a 
hiding-place  for  our  things.  Notwithstanding  all  this 
furniture,  there  was  still  room  to  turn  around  in,  but 
not  to  swing  a  cat  in,  at  least  with  entire  security  to 
the  cat.  However,  the  room  was  large,  for  a  ship's 
stateroom,  and  was  in  every  way  satisfactory. 

The  vessel  was  appointed  to  sail  on  a  certain  Sat- 
urday early  in  June. 

A  little  after  noon,  on  that  distinguished  Saturday, 
I  reached  the  ship  and  went  on  board.  All  was 
bustle  and  confusion.  [I  have  seen  that  remark  be- 
fore, somewhere.]  The  pier  was  crowded  with  car- 
riages and  men;  passengers  were  arriving  and  hurry- 
ing on  board;  the  vessel's  decks  were  encumbered 
with  trunks  and  valises;  groups  of  excursionists,  ar- 
rayed in  unattractive  traveling-costumes,  were  mop- 
ing about  in  a  drizzling  rain  and  looking  as  droopy 
and  woebegone  as  so  many  molting  chickens.  The 
gallant  flag  was  up,  but  it  was  under  the  spell,  too, 
and  hung  limp  and  disheartened  by  the  mast.  Al- 
together, it  was  the  bluest,  bluest  spectacle !  It  was 
a  pleasure  excursion — there  was  no  gainsaying  that, 
because  the  program  said  so — it  was  so  nominated 
in  the  bond — but  it  surely  hadn't  the  general  aspect 
of  one. 

Finally,  above  the  banging,  and  rumbling,  and 
shouting  and  hissing  of  steam,  rang  the  order  to 

13 


MARK    TWAIN 

"cast  off!" — a  sudden  rush  to  the  gangways — a 
scampering  ashore  of  visitors — a  revolution  of  the 
wheels,  and  we  were  off — the  picnic  was  begun! 
Two  very  mild  cheers  went  up  from  the  dripping 
crowd  on  the  pier;  we  answered  them  gently  from 
the  slippery  decks;  the  flag  made  an  effort  to  wave, 
and  failed;  the  "battery  of  guns"  spake  not — the 
ammunition  was  out. 

We  steamed  down  to  the  foot  of  the  harbor  and 
came  to  anchor.  It  was  still  raining.  And  not  only 
raining,  but  storming.  "Outside "  we  could  see,  our- 
selves, that  there  was  a  tremendous  sea  on.  We 
must  lie  still,  in  the  calm  harbor,  till  the  storm  should 
abate.  Our  passengers  hailed  from  fifteen  states; 
only  a  few  of  them  had  ever  been  to  sea  before; 
manifestly  it  would  not  do  to  pit  them  against  a  full- 
blown tempest  until  they  had  got  their  sea-legs  on. 
Toward  evening  the  two  steam-tugs  that  had  accom- 
panied us  with  a  rollicking  champagne  party  of  young 
New-Yorkers  on  board  who  wished  to  bid  farewell  to 
one  of  our  number  in  due  and  ancient  form,  de- 
parted, and  we  were  alone  on  the  deep.  On  deep 
five  fathoms,  and  anchored  fast  to  the  bottom.  And 
out  in  the  solemn  rain,  at  that.  This  was  pleasur- 
ing with  a  vengeance. 

It  was  an  appropriate  relief  when  the  gong  sounded 
for  prayer-meeting.  The  first  Saturday  night  of  any 
other  pleasure  excursion  might  have  been  devoted  to 
whist  and  dancing;  but  I  submit  it  to  the  unpreju- 
diced mind  if  it  would  have  been  in  good  taste  for  us 
to  engage  in  such  frivolities,  considering  what  we  had 
gone  through  and  the  frame  of  mind  we  were  in. 

14 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

We  would  have  shone  at  a  wake,  but  not  at  anything 
more  festive. 

However,  there  is  always  a  cheering  influence  about 
the  sea;  and  in  my  berth,  that  night,  rocked  by  the 
measured  swell  of  the  waves,  and  lulled  by  the  mur- 
mur of  the  distant  surf,  I  soon  passed  tranquilly  out 
of  all  consciousness  of  the  dreary  experiences  of  the 
day  and  damaging  premonitions  of  the  future. 


CHAPTER  III 

ALL  day  Sunday  at  anchor.  The  storm  had  gone 
JT\  down  a  great  deal,  but  the  sea  had  not.  It  was 
still  piling  its  frothy  hills  high  in  air  "outside,"  as 
we  could  plainly  see  with  the  glasses.  We  could 
not  properly  begin  a  pleasure  excursion  on  Sunday; 
we  could  not  offer  untried  stomachs  to  so  pitiless  a 
sea  as  that.  We  must  lie  still  till  Monday.  And 
we  did.  But  we  had  repetitions  of  church  and 
prayer-meetings;  and  so,  of  course,  we  were  just  as 
eligibly  situated  as  we  could  have  been  anywhere. 

I  was  up  early  that  Sabbath  morning,  and  was 
early  to  breakfast.  I  felt  a  perfectly  natural  desire 
to  have  a  good,  long,  unprejudiced  look  at  the  pas- 
sengers, at  a  time  when  they  should  be  free  from 
self- consciousness — which  is  at  breakfast,  when  such 
a  moment  occurs  in  the  lives  of  human  beings  at  all. 

I  was  greatly  surprised  to  see  so  many  elderly  peo- 
ple— I  might  almost  say,  so  many  venerable  people. 
A  glance  at  the  long  lines  of  heads  was  apt  to  make 
one  think  it  was  all  gray.  But  it  was  not.  There 
was  a  tolerably  fair  sprinkling  of  young  folks,  and 
another  fair  sprinkling  of  gentlemen  and  ladies  who 
were  non-committal  as  to  age,  being  neither  actually 
old  nor  absolutely  young. 

The  next  morning,  we  weighed  anchor  and  went 

ID 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

to  sea.  It  was  a  great  happiness  to  get  away,  after 
this  dragging,  dispiriting  delay.  I  thought  there 
never  was  such  gladness  in  the  air  before,  such 
brightness  in  the  sun,  such  beauty  in  the  sea.  I  was 
satisfied  with  the  picnic,  then,  and  with  all  its  belong- 
ings. All  my  malicious  instincts  were  dead  within 
me ;  and  as  America  faded  out  of  sight,  I  think  a  spirit 
of  charity  rose  up  in  their  place  that  was  as  bound- 
less, for  the  time  being,  as  the  broad  ocean  that  was 
heaving  its  billows  about  us.  I  wished  to  express 
my  feelings — I  wished  to  lift  up  my  voice  and  sing, 
but  I  did  not  know  anything  to  sing,  and  so  I  was 
obliged  to  give  up  the  idea.  It  was  no  loss  to  the 
ship  though,  perhaps. 

It  was  breezy  and  pleasant,  but  the  sea  was  still 
very  rough.  One  could  not  promenade  without 
risking  his  neck;  at  one  moment  the  bowsprit  was 
taking  a  deadly  aim  at  the  sun  in  mid-heaven,  and 
at  the  next  it  was  trying  to  harpoon  a  shark  in  the 
bottom  of  the  ocean.  What  a  weird  sensation  it  is 
to  feel  the  stern  of  a  ship  sinking  swiftly  from  under 
you  and  see  the  bow  climbing  high  away  among  the 
clouds!  One's  safest  course,  that  day,  was  to  clasp 
a  railing  and  hang  on;  walking  was  too  precarious 
a  pastime. 

By  some  happy  fortune  I  was  not  seasick.  That 
was  a  thing  to  be  proud  of.  I  had  not  always  es- 
caped before.  If  there  is  one  thing  in  the  world 
that  will  make  a  man  peculiarly  and  insufferably 
self -conceited,  it  is  to  have  his  stomach  behave  itself, 
the  first  day  at  sea,  when  nearly  all  his  comrades 
are  seasick.     Soon,  a  venerable  fossil,  shawled  to 

17 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  chin  and  bandaged  like  a  mummy,  appeared  at 
the  door  of  the  after  deck-house,  and  the  next  lurch 
of  the  ship  shot  him  into  my  arms.     I  said: 

"Good  morning,  sir.     It  is  a  fine  day." 

He  put  his  hand  on  his  stomach  and  said,  "Oh, 
my!"  and  then  staggered  away  and  fell  over  the 
coop  of  a  skylight. 

Presently  another  old  gentleman  was  projected 
from  the  same  door,  with  great  violence.     I  said: 

"Calm  yourself,  sir.  There  is  no  hurry.  It  is  a 
fine  day,  sir." 

He,  also,  put  his  hand  on  his  stomach  and  said 
"Oh,  my!"  and  reeled  away. 

In  a  little  while  another  veteran  was  discharged 
abruptly  from  the  same  door,  clawing  at  the  air  for 
a  saving  support.     I  said: 

"Good  morning,  sir.  It  is  a  fine  day  for  pleasur- 
ing.    You  were  about  to  say — " 

"Oh,  my!" 

I  thought  so.  I  anticipated  him,  anyhow.  I 
stayed  there  and  was  bombarded  with  old  gentlemen 
for  an  hour,  perhaps;  and  all  I  got  out  of  any  of 
them  was  "Oh,  my!" 

I  went  away,  then,  in  a  thoughtful  mood.  I  said, 
this  is  a  good  pleasure  excursion.  I  like  it.  The 
passengers  are  not  garrulous,  but  still  they  are 
sociable.  I  like  those  old  people,  but  somehow  they 
all  seem  to  have  the  "Oh,  my"  rather  bad. 

I  knew  what  was  the  matter  with  them.  They 
were  seasick.  And  I  was  glad  of  it.  We  all  like  to 
see  people  seasick  when  we  are  not,  ourselves.  Play- 
ing whist  by  the  cabin  lamps,  when  it  is  storming 

18 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

outside,  is  pleasant ;  walking  the  quarter-deck  in  the 
moonlight  is  pleasant;  smoking  in  the  breezy  fore- 
top  is  pleasant,  when  one  is  not  afraid  to  go  up  there; 
but  these  are  all  feeble  and  commonplace  compared 
with  the  joy  of  seeing  people  suffering  the  miseries 
of  seasickness. 

I  picked  up  a  good  deal  of  information  during  the 
afternoon.  At  one  time  I  was  climbing  up  the 
quarter-deck  when  the  vessel's  stern  was  in  the  sky; 
I  was  smoking  a  cigar  and  feeling  passably  comfort- 
able.    Somebody  ejaculated: 

"Come,  now,  that  won't  answer.  Read  the  sign 
up  there — No  smoking  abaft  the  wheel!" 

It  was  Captain  Duncan,  chief  of  the  expedition. 
I  went  forward,  of  course.  I  saw  a  long  spy-glass 
lying  on  a  desk  in  one  of  the  upper-deck  staterooms 
back  of  the  pilot-house,  and  reached  after  it — there 
was  a  ship  in  the  distance: 

"Ah,  ah — hands  off!    Come  out  of  that!" 

I  came  out  of  that.  I  said  to  a  deck-sweep — but 
in  a  low  voice: 

"Who  is  that  overgrown  pirate  with  the  whiskers 
and  the  discordant  voice?" 

"It's  Captain  Bursley — executive  officer — sail- 
ing-master." 

I  loitered  about  awhile,  and  then,  for  want  of  some- 
thing better  to  do,  fell  to  carving  a  railing  with  my  knife. 
Somebody  said,  in  an  insinuating,  admonitory  voice : 

"Now,  say — my  friend — don't  you  know  any  bet- 
ter than  to  be  whittling  the  ship  all  to  pieces  that 
way?     You  ought  to  know  better  than  that." 

I  went  back  and  found  the  deck-sweep: 

19 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Who  is  that  smooth-faced  animated  outrage 
yonder  in  the  fine  clothes?" 

"That's  Captain  L ,  the  owner  of  the  ship — 

he's  one  of  the  main  bosses." 

In  the  course  of  time  I  brought  up  on  the  star- 
board side  of  the  pilot-house,  and  found  a  sextant 
lying  on  a  bench.  Now,  I  said,  they  "take  tht 
sun"  through  this  thing;  I  should  think  I  might  see 
that  vessel  through  it.  I  had  hardly  got  it  to  my 
eye  when  some  one  touched  me  on  the  shoulder  and 
said,  deprecatingly : 

"I'll  have  to  get  you  to  give  that  to  me,  sir.  If 
there's  anything  you'd  like  to  know  about  taking 
the  sun,  I'd  as  soon  tell  you  as  not — but  I  don't 
like  to  trust  anybody  with  that  instrument.  If  you 
want  any  figuring  done —    Aye-aye,  sir!" 

He  was  gone,  to  answer  a  call  from  the  other  side. 
I  sought  the  deck-sweep: 

"Who  is  that  spider-legged  gorilla  yonder  witft 
the  sanctimonious  countenance?" 

"It's  Captain  Jones,  sir — the  chief  mate." 

"Well.  This  goes  clear  away  ahead  of  anything 
I  ever  heard  of  before.  Do  you — now  I  ask  you 
as  a  man  and  a  brother — do  you  think  I  could 
venture  to  throw  a  rock  here  in  any  given  direction 
without  hitting  a  captain  of  this  ship?" 

"Well,  sir,  I  don't  know — I  think  likely  you'd 
fetch  the  captain  of  the  watch,  maybe,  because  he's 
a-standing  right  yonder  in  the  way." 

I  went  below — meditating,  and  a  little  down-heart 
ed.     I  thought,  if  five  cooks  can  spoil  a  broth,  what 
may  not  five  captains  do  with  a  pleasure  excursion. 

20 


CHAPTER  IV 

WE  plowed  along  bravely  for  a  week  or  more, 
and  without  any  conflict  of  jurisdiction  among 
the  captains  worth  mentioning.  The  passengers 
soon  learned  to  accommodate  themselves  to  their  new 
circumstances,  and  life  in  the  ship  became  nearly 
as  systematically  monotonous  as  the  routine  of  a 
barrack.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  was  dull,  for  it 
was  not  entirely  so  by  any  means — but  there  was  a 
good  deal  of  sameness  about  it.  As  is  always  the 
fashion  at  sea,  the  passengers  shortly  began  to  pick 
up  sailor  terms — a  sign  that  they  were  beginning 
to  feel  at  home.  Half  past  six  was  no  longer  half 
past  six  to  these  pilgrims  from  New  England,  the 
South,  and  the  Mississippi  Valley,  it  was  "seven 
bells";  eight,  twelve,  and  four  o'clock  were  "eight 
bells";  the  captain  did  not  take  the  longitude  at 
nine  o'clock,  but  at  "two  bells."  They  spoke 
glibly  of  the  "after  cabin,"  the  "for'rard  cabin," 
"port  and  starboard,"  and  the  "fo'castle." 

At  seven  bells  the  first  gong  rang;  at  eight  there 
was  breakfast,  for  such  as  were  not  too  seasick  to 
eat  it.  After  that  all  the  well  people  walked  arm- 
in-arm  up  and  down  the  long  promenade  deck, 
enjoying  the  fine  summer  mornings,  and  the  seasick 
ones  crawled  out  and  propped  themselves  up  in  the 

21 


MARK    TWAIN 

lee  of  the  paddle-boxes  and  ate  their  dismal  tea  and 
toast,  and  looked  wretched.  From  eleven  o'clock 
until  luncheon,  and  from  luncheon  until  dinner  at 
six  in  the  evening,  the  employments  and  amusements 
were  various.  Some  reading  was  done;  and  much 
smoking  and  sewing,  though  not  by  the  same  parties; 
there  were  the  monsters  of  the  deep  to  be  looked 
after  and  wondered  at;  strange  ships  had  to  be 
scrutinized  through  opera-glasses,  and  sage  decisions 
arrived  at  concerning  them;  and  more  than  that, 
everybody  took  a  personal  interest  in  seeing  that 
the  flag  was  run  up  and  politely  dipped  three  times 
in  response  to  the  salutes  of  those  strangers;  in  the 
smoking-room  there  were  always  parties  of  gentle- 
men playing  euchre,  draughts,  and  dominoes,  es- 
pecially dominoes,  that  delightfully  harmless  game; 
and  down  on  the  main  deck,  "for'rard" — for'rard  of 
the  chicken-coops  and  the  cattle — we  had  what 
was  called  "horse-billiards."  Horse-billiards  is  a 
fine  game.  It  affords  good,  active  exercise,  hilarity, 
and  consuming  excitement.  It  is  a  mixture  of  "hop- 
scotch" and  shuffle-board  played  with  a  crutch. 
A  large  hop-scotch  diagram  is  marked  out  on  the 
deck  with  chalk,  and  each  compartment  numbered. 
You  stand  off  three  or  four  steps,  with  some  broad 
wooden  disks  before  you  on  the  deck,  and  these 
you  send  forward  with  a  vigorous  thrust  of  a  long 
crutch.  If  a  disk  stops  on  a  chalk  line,  it  does  not 
count  anything.  If  it  stops  in  division  No.  7, 
it  counts  7;  in  5,  it  counts  5,  and  so  on.  The  game 
is  100,  and  four  can  play  at  a  time.  That  game 
would  be  very  simple,  played  on  a  stationary  floor, 

22 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

but  with  us,  to  play  it  well  required  science.  We 
had  to  allow  for  the  reeling  of  the  ship  to  the  right 
or  the  left.  Very  often  one  made  calculations  for  a 
heel  to  the  right  and  the  ship  did  not  go  that  way. 
The  consequence  was  that  that  disk  missed  the 
whole  hop-scotch  plan  a  yard  or  two,  and  then  there 
was  humiliation  on  one  side  and  laughter  on  the  other. 

When  it  rained,  the  passengers  had  to  stay  in  the 
house,  of  course — or  at  least  the  cabins — and  amuse 
themselves  with  games,  reading,  looking  out  of  the 
windows  at  very  familiar  billows,  and  talking  gossip. 

By  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening,  dinner  was  about 
over;  an  hour's  promenade  on  the  upper  deck  fol- 
lowed; then  the  gong  sounded  and  a  large  majority 
of  the  party  repaired  to  the  after  cabin  (upper),  a 
handsome  saloon  fifty  or  sixty  feet  long,  for  prayers. 
The  unregenerated  called  this  saloon  the  "  Syna- 
gogue." The  devotions  consisted  only  of  two  hymns 
from  the  " Plymouth  Collection,"  and  a  short  prayer, 
and  seldom  occupied  more  than  fifteen  minutes. 
The  hymns  were  accompanied  by  parlor  organ  music 
when  the  sea  was  smooth  enough  to  allow  a  per- 
former to  sit  at  the  instrument  without  being  lashed 
to  his  chair. 

After  prayers  the  Synagogue  shortly  took  the 
semblance  of  a  writing-school.  The  like  of  that 
picture  was  never  seen  in  a  ship  before.  Behind  the 
long  dining-tables  on  either  side  of  the  saloon,  and 
scattered  from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  latter, 
some  twenty  or  thirty  gentlemen  and  ladies  sat  them 
down  under  the  swaying  lamps,  and  for  two  or  three 
hours  wrote  diligently  in  their  journals.     Alas!  that 

23 


MARK    TWAIN 

journals  so  voluminously  begun  should  come  to  so 
lame  and  impotent  a  conclusion  as  most  of  them 
did!  I  doubt  if  there  is  a  single  pilgrim  of  all  that 
host  but  can  show  a  hundred  fair  pages  of  journal 
concerning  the  first  twenty  days'  voyaging  in  the 
Quaker  City;  and  I  am  morally  certain  that  not  ten 
of  the  party  can  show  twenty  pages  of  journal  for 
the  succeeding  twenty  thousand  miles  of  voyaging! 
At  certain  periods  it  becomes  the  dearest  ambition 
of  a  man  to  keep  a  faithful  record  of  his  perform- 
ances in  a  book;  and  he  dashes  at  his  work  with  an 
enthusiasm  that  imposes  on  him  the  notion  that 
keeping  a  journal  is  the  veriest  pastime  in  the  world, 
and  the  pleasantest.  But  if  he  only  lives  twenty-one 
days,  he  will  find  out  that  only  those  rare  natures 
that  are  made  up  of  pluck,  endurance,  devotion  to 
duty  for  duty's  sake,  and  invincible  determination, 
may  hope  to  venture  upon  so  tremendous  an  enter- 
prise as  the  keeping  of  a  journal  and  not  sustain  a 
shameful  defeat. 

One  of  our  favorite  youths,  Jack,  a  splendid 
young  fellow  with  a  head  full  of  good  sense,  and  a 
pair  of  legs  that  were  a  wonder  to  look  upon  in  the 
way  of  length  and  straightness  and  slimness,  used 
to  report  progress  every  morning  in  the  most  glow- 
ing and  spirited  way,  and  say: 

"Oh,  I'm  coming  along  bully!"  (he  was  a  little 
given  to  slang,  in  his  happier  moods)  "I  wrote  ten 
pages  in  my  journal  last  night — and  you  know  I 
wrote  nine  the  night  before,  and  twelve  the  night 
before  that.     Why,  it's  only  fun!" 

"What  do  you  find  to  put  in  it,  Jack?" 

24 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

4<Oh,  everything.  Latitude  and  longitude,  noon 
every  day;  and  how  many  miles  we  made  last 
twenty -four  hours ;  and  all  the  domino  games  I  beat, 
and  horse-billiards;  and  whales  and  sharks  and 
porpoises;  and  the  text  of  the  sermon,  Sundays 
(because  that  '11  tell  at  home,  you  know);  and  the 
ships  we  saluted  and  what  nation  they  were;  and 
which  way  the  wind  was,  and  whether  there  was  a 
heavy  sea,  and  what  sail  we  carried,  though  we  don't 
ever  carry  any,  principally,  going  against  a  head 
wind  always — wonder  what  is  the  reason  of  that?-^ 
and  how  many  lies  Moult  has  told — Oh,  everything! 
I've  got  everything  down.  My  father  told  me  to 
keep  that  journal.  Father  wouldn't  take  a  thousand 
dollars  for  it  when  I  get  it  done." 

"No,  Jack;  it  will  be  worth  more  than  a  thousand 
dollars — when  you  get  it  done." 

"Do  you? — no,  but  do  you  think  it  will,  though?" 

"Yes,  it  will  be  worth  at  least  as  much  as  a  thou- 
sand dollars — when  you  get  it  done.     Maybe,  more." 

"Well,  I  about  half  think  so,  myself.  It  ain't  no 
slouch  of  a  journal." 

But  it  shortly  became  a  most  lamentable  "slouch 
of  a  journal."  One  night  in  Paris,  after  a  hard 
day's  toil  in  sight-seeing,  I  said: 

"Now  I'll  go  and  stroll  around  the  cafes  awhile, 
Jack,  and  give  you  a  chance  to  write  up  your  jour- 
nal, old  fellow." 

His  countenance  lost  its  fire.     He  said: 

"Well,  no,  you  needn't  mind.  I  think  I  won't 
run  that  journal  any  more.  It  is  awful  tedious.  Do 
you  know — I  reckon  I'm  as  much  as  four  thousand 
i— *  25 


MARK    TWAIN 

pages  behindhand.  I  haven't  got  any  France  in  it 
at  all.  First  I  thought  I'd  leave  France  out  and  start 
fresh.  But  that  wouldn't  do,  would  it?  The  gov- 
ernor would  say,  'Hello,  here — didn't  see  anything 
in  France?'  That  cat  wouldn't  fight,  you  know. 
First  I  thought  I'd  copy  France  out  of  the  guide- 
book, like  old  Badger  in  the  for'rard  cabin  who's 
writing  a  book,  but  there's  more  than  three  hundred 
pages  of  it.  Oh,  I  don't  think  a  journal's  any  use 
— do  you?     They're  only  a  bother,  ain't  they?" 

"Yes,  a  journal  that  is  incomplete  isn't  of  much 
use,  but  a  journal  properly  kept  is  worth  a  thousand 
dollars, — when  you've  got  it  done." 

"A  thousand! — well,  I  should  think  so.  I 
wouldn't  finish  it  for  a  million." 

His  experience  was  only  the  experience  of  the 
majority  of  that  industrious  night  school  in  the 
cabin.  If  you  wish  to  inflict  a  heartless  and  malig- 
nant punishment  upon  a  young  person,  pledge  him 
to  keep  a  journal  a  year. 

A  good  many  expedients  were  resorted  to  to  keep 
the  excursionists  amused  and  satisfied.  A  club  was 
formed,  of  all  the  passengers,  which  met  in  the 
writing-school  after  prayers  and  read  aloud  about 
the  countries  we  were  approaching,  and  discussed 
the  information  so  obtained. 

Several  times  the  photographer  of  the  expedition 
brought  out  his  transparent  pictures  and  gave  us  a 
handsome  magic-lantern  exhibition.  His  views  were 
nearly  all  of  foreign  scenes,  but  there  were  one  or 
two  home  pictures  among  them.  He  advertised  that 
he  would  "open  his  performance  in  the  after  cabin 

26 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

at  'two  bells'  [9  p.m.],  and  show  the  passengers 
where  they  shall  eventually  arrive" — which  was  all 
very  well,  but  by  a  funny  accident  the  first  picture 
that  flamed  out  upon  the  canvas  was  a  view  of 
Greenwood  Cemetery! 

On  several  starlight  nights  we  danced  on  the  upper 
deck,  under  the  awnings,  and  made  something  of  a 
ballroom  display  of  brilliancy  by  hanging  a  number 
of  ship's  lanterns  to  the  stanchions.  Our  music 
consisted  of  the  well-mixed  strains  of  a  melodeon 
which  was  a  little  asthmatic  and  apt  to  catch  its 
breath  where  it  ought  to  come  out  strong;  a  clarinet 
which  was  a  little  unreliable  on  the  high  keys  and 
rather  melancholy  on  the  low  ones;  and  a  disrepu- 
table accordion  tha/t  had  a  leak  somewhere  and 
breathed  louder  than  it  squawked — a  more  elegant 
term  does  not  occur  to  me  just  now.  However,  the 
dancing  was  infinitely  worse  than  the  music.  When 
the  ship  rolled  to  starboard  the  whole  platoon  of 
dancers  came  charging  down  to  starboard  with  it, 
and  brought  up  in  mass  at  the  rail;  and  when  it 
rolled  to  port,  they  went  floundering  down  to  port 
with  the  same  unanimity  of  sentiment.  Waltzers 
spun  around  precariously  for  a  matter  of  fifteen 
seconds  and  then  went  scurrying  down  to  the  rail  as 
if  they  meant  to  go  overboard.  The  Virginia  reel, 
as  performed  on  board  the  Quaker  City,  had  more 
genuine  reel  about  it  than  any  reel  I  ever  saw  be- 
fore, and  was  as  full  of  interest  to  the  spectator  as  it 
was  full  of  desperate  chances  and  hair-breadth  es- 
capes to  the  participant.  We  gave  up  dancing, 
finally. 

27 


MARK    TWAIN 

We  celebrated  a  lady's  birthday  anniversary,  with 
toasts,  speeches,  a  poem,  and  so  forth.  We  also 
had  a  mock  trial.  No  ship  ever  went  to  sea  that 
hadn't  a  mock  trial  on  board.  The  purser  was  ac- 
cused of  stealing  an  overcoat  from  stateroom  No. 
10.  A  judge  was  appointed;  also  clerks,  a  crier  of 
the  court,  constables,  sheriffs;  counsel  for  the  state 
and  for  the  defendant;  witnesses  were  subpoenaed, 
and  a  jury  empaneled  after  much  challenging.  The 
witnesses  were  stupid  and  unreliable  and  contradic- 
tory, as  witnesses  always  are.  The  counsel  were 
eloquent,  argumentative,  and  vindictively  abusive  of 
each  other,  as  was  characteristic  and  proper.  The 
case  was  at  last  submitted,  and  duly  finished  by  the 
judge  with  an  absurd  decision  and  a  ridiculous 
sentence. 

The  acting  of  charades  was  tried,  on  several  even- 
ings, by  the  young  gentlemen  and  ladies,  in  the 
cabins,  and  proved  the  most  distinguished  success  of 
all  the  amusement  experiments. 

An  attempt  was  made  to  organize  a  debating  club, 
but  it  was  a  failure.  There  was  no  oratorical  talent 
in  the  ship. 

We  all  enjoyed  ourselves — I  think  I  can  safely 
say  that,  but  it  was  in  a  rather  quiet  way.  We  very, 
very  seldom  played  the  piano;  we  played  the  flute 
and  the  clarinet  together,  and  made  good  music, 
too,  what  there  was  of  it,  but  we  always  played  the 
same  old  tune;  it  was  a  very  pretty  tune — how  well 
I  remember  it — I  wonder  when  I  shall  ever  get  rid 
of  it.  We  never  played  either  the  melodeon  or  the 
organ,    except   at   devotions — but    1   am   too   fast; 

28 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

young  Albert  did  know  part  of  a  tune — something 
about  "O  Some thing-or-  Other  How  Sweet  it  is  to 
Know  that  he's  his  What's-his-Name "  (I  do  not 
remember  the  exact  title  of  it,  but  it  was  very  plain- 
tive, and  full  of  sentiment);  Albert  played  that 
pretty  much  all  the  time,  until  we  contracted  with 
him  to  restrain  himself.  But  nobody  ever  sang  by 
moonlight  on  the  upper  deck,  and  the  congregational 
singing  at  church  and  prayers  was  not  of  a  superior 
order  of  architecture.  I  put  up  with  it  as  long  as  I 
could,  and  then  joined  in  and  tried  to  improve  it, 
but  this  encouraged  young  George  to  join  in,  too, 
and  that  made  a  failure  of  it;  because  George's 
voice  was  just  "turning,"  and  wThen  he  was  singing 
a  dismal  sort  of  bass,  it  was  apt  to  fly  off  the  handle 
and  startle  everybody  with  a  most  discordant  cackle 
on  the  upper  notes.  George  didn't  know  the  tunes, 
either,  which  was  also  a  drawback  to  his  perform- 
ances.    I  said: 

"Come,  now,  George,  don't  improvise.  It  looks 
too  egotistical.  It  will  provoke  remark.  Just  stick 
to  'Coronation,'  like  the  others.  It  is  a  good  tune 
— you  can't  improve  it  any,  just  offhand,  in  this 
way." 

"Why,  I'm  not  trying  to  improve  it — and  I  am 
singing  like  the  others — just  as  it  is  in  the  notes." 

And  he  honestly  thought  he  was,  too;  and  so  he 
had  no  one  to  blame  but  himself  when  his  voice 
caught  on  the  center  occasionally,  and  gave  him  the 
lockjaw. 

There  were  those  among  the  unregenerated  who 
attributed  the  unceasing  head -winds  to  our  distress- 

29 


MARK    TWAIN 

ing  choir  music.  There  were  those  who  said  openly 
that  it  was  taking  chances  enough  to  have  such 
ghastly  music  going  on,  even  when  it  was  at  its  best ; 
and  that  to  exaggerate  the  crime  by  letting  George 
help,  was  simply  flying  in  the  face  of  Providence. 
These  said  that  the  choir  would  keep  up  their  lacer- 
ating attempts  at  melody  until  they  would  bring 
down  a  storm  some  day  that  would  sink  the  ship. 

There  were  even  grumblers  at  the  prayers.  The 
executive  officer  said  the  Pilgrims  had  no  charity. 

"There  they  are,  down  there  every  night  at  eight 
bells,  praying  for  fair  winds — when  they  know  as 
well  as  I  do  that  this  is  the  only  ship  going  east  this 
time  of  the  year,  but  there's  a  thousand  coming 
west — what's  a  fair  wind  for  us  is  a  head-wind  to 
them — the  Almighty's  blowing  a  fair  wind  for  a 
thousand  vessels,  and  this  tribe  wants  him  to  turn  it 
clear  around  so  as  to  accommodate  one, — and  she  a 
steamship  at  that !  It  ain't  good  sense,  it  ain't  good 
reason,  it  ain't  good  Christianity,  it  ain't  common 
human  charity.     Avast  with  such  nonsense!'' 


CHAPTER  V 

TAKING  it  "by  and  large,"  as  the  sailors  say, 
we  had  a  pleasant  ten  days'  run  from  New- 
York  to  the  Azores  islands — not  a  fast  run,  for  the 
distance  is  only  twenty-four  hundred  miles — but  a 
right  pleasant  one,  in  the  main.  True,  we  had  head- 
winds all  the  time,  and  several  stormy  experiences 
which  sent  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  passengers  to  bed, 
sick,  and  made  the  ship  look  dismal  and  deserted — 
stormy  experiences  that  all  will  remember  who 
weathered  them  on  the  tumbling  deck,  and  aught 
the  vast  sheets  of  spray  that  every  now  and  then 
sprang  high  in  air  from  the  weather  bow  and  swept 
the  ship  like  a  thunder-shower;  but  for  the  most 
part  we  had  balmy  summer  weather,  and  nights  that 
were  even  finer  than  the  days.  We  had  the  phe- 
nomenon of  a  full  moon  located  just  in  the  same 
spot  in  the  heavens  at  the  same  hour  every  night. 
The  reason  of  this  singular  conduct  on  the  part  of 
the  moon  did  not  occur  to  us  at  first,  but  it  did 
afterward  when  we  reflected  that  we  were  gaining 
about  twenty  minutes  every  day,  because  we  were 
going  east  so  fast — we  gained  just  about  enough 
every  day  to  keep  along  with  the  moon.  It  was 
becoming  an  old  moon  to  the  friends  we  had  left 
behind  us,  but  to  us  Joshuas  it  stood  still  in  the 
same  place,  and  remained  always  the  same. 

31 


MARK    TWAIN 

Young  Mr.  Blucher,  who  is  from  the  Far  West, 
and  is  on  his  first  voyage,  was  a  good  deal  worried 
by  the  constantly  changing  "ship  time."  He  was 
proud  of  his  new  watch  at  first,  and  used  to  drag  it 
out  promptly  when  eight  bells  struck  at  noon,  but 
he  came  to  look  after  a  while  as  if  he  were  losing 
confidence  in  it.  Seven  days  out  from  New  York 
he  came  on  deck,  and  said  with  great  decision: 

"This  thing's  a  swindle!" 

"What's  a  swindle?" 

"Why,  this  watch.  I  bought  her  out  in  Illinois 
■ — gave  $150  for  her — and  I  thought  she  was  good. 
And,  by  George,  she  is  good  on  shore,  but  some- 
how she  don't  keep  up  her  lick  here  on  the  water — 
gets  seasick,  maybe.  She  skips;  she  runs  along 
regular  enough  till  half -past  eleven,  and  then,  all  of 
a  sudden,  she  lets  down.  I've  set  that  old  regulator 
up  faster  and  faster,  till  I've  shoved  it  clear  around, 
but  it  don't  do  any  good;  she  just  distances  every 
watch  in  the  ship,  and  clatters  along  in  a  way  that's 
astonishing  till  it  is  noon,  but  them  eight  bells  always 
gets  in  about  ten  minutes  ahead  of  her,  anyway.  I 
don't  know  what  to  do  with  her  now.  She's  doing 
all  she  can — she's  going  her  best  gait,  but  it  won't 
save  her.  Now,  don't  you  know,  there  ain't  a  watch 
in  the  ship  that's  making  better  time  than  she  is; 
but  what  does  it  signify?  When  you  hear  them 
eight  bells  you'll  find  her  just  about  ten  minutes 
short  of  her  score,  sure." 

The  ship  was  gaining  a  full  hour  every  three  days, 
and  this  fellow  was  trying  to  make  his  watch  go  fast 
enough  to  keep  up  to  her.     But,  as  he  had  said,  he 

32 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

had  pushed  the  regulator  up  as  far  as  it  would  go, 
and  the  watch  was  "on  its  best  gait,"  and  so  noth- 
ing was  left  him  but  to  fold  his  hands  and  see  the 
ship  beat  the  race.  We  sent  him  to  the  captain, 
and  he  explained  to  him  the  mystery  of  "ship 
time,"  and  set  his  troubled  mind  at  rest.  This 
young  man  asked  a  great  many  questions  about 
seasickness  before  we  left,  and  wanted  to  know  what 
its  characteristics  were,  and  how  he  was  to  tell  when 
he  had  it.     He  found  out. 

We  saw  the  usual  sharks,  blackfish,  porpoises, 
etc.,  of  course,  and  by  and  by  large  schools  of  Portu- 
guese men-of-war  were  added  to  the  regular  list  of 
sea- wonders.  Some  of  them  were  white  and  some 
of  a  brilliant  carmine  color.  The  nautilus  is  noth^ 
ing  but  a  transparent  web  of  jelly,  that  spreads 
itself  to  catch  the  wind,  and  has  fleshy-looking 
strings  a  foot  or  two  long  dangling  from  it  to  keep 
it  steady  in  the  water.  It  is  an  accomplished  sailor, 
and  has  good  sailor  judgment.  It  reefs  its  sail  when 
a  storm  threatens  or  the  wind  blows  pretty  hard,  and 
furls  it  entirely  and  goes  down  when  a  gale  blows. 
Ordinarily  it  keeps  its  sail  wet  and  in  good  sailing 
order  by  turning  over  and  dipping  it  in  the  water  for 
a  moment.  Seamen  say  the  nautilus  is  only  found 
in  these  waters  between  the  35th  and  45th  parallels 
of  latitude. 

At  three  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  21st  of 
June  we  were  awakened  and  notified  that  the 
Azores  islands  were  in  sight.  I  said  I  did  not  take 
any  interest  in  islands  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing.    But  another  persecutor  came,  and  then  another 

33 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  another,  and  finally  believing  that  the  general 
enthusiasm  would  permit  no  one  to  slumber  in 
peace,  I  got  up  and  went  sleepily  on  deck.  It 
five  and  a  half  o'clock  now,  and  a  raw,  blustering 
morning.  The  passengers  were  huddled  about  the 
smoke-stacks  and  fortified  behind  ventilators,  and  all 
were  wrapped  in  wintry  costumes,  and  looking  sleepy 
and  unhappy  in  the  pitiless  gale  and  the  drenching 
spray. 

The  island  in  sight  was  Flores.  It  seemed  only  a 
mountain  of  mud  standing  up  out  of  the  dull  mists 
of  the  sea.  But  as  we  bore  down  upon  it,  the  sun 
came  out  and  made  it  a  beautiful  picture — a  mass 
of  green  farms  and  meadows  that  swelled  up  to  a 
height  of  fifteen  hundred  feet,  and  mingled  its 
upper  outlines  with  the  clouds.  It  was  ribbed  with 
sharp,  steep  ridges,  and  cloven  with  narrow  canons, 
and  here  and  there  on  the  heights,  rocky  upheavals 
shaped  themselves  into  mimic  battlements  and 
castles;  and  out  of  rifted  clouds  came  broad  shafts 
of  sunlight,  that  painted  summit  and  slope  and 
glen  with  bands  of  fire,  and  left  belts  of  somber 
shade  between.  It  was  the  aurora  borealis  of  the 
frozen  pole  exiled  to  a  summer  land! 

We  skirted  around  two- thirds  of  the  island,  four 
miles  from  shore,  and  all  the  opera-glasses  in  the 
ship  were  called  into  requisition  to  settle  disputes  as 
to  whether  mossy  spots  on  the  uplands  were  groves 
of  trees  or  groves  of  weeds,  or  whether  the  white 
villages  down  by  the  sea  were  really  villages  or  only 
the  clustering  tombstones  of  cemeteries.  Finally, 
we  stood  to  sea  and  bore  away  for  San  Miguel,  and 

34 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Flores  shortly  became  a  dome  of  mud  again,  and 
sank  down  among  the  mists  and  disappeared.  But 
to  many  a  seasick  passenger  it  was  good  to  see  the 
green  hills  again,  and  all  were  more  cheerful  after  this 
episode  than  anybody  could  have  expected  them  to 
be,  considering  how  sinfully  early  they  had  gotten  up. 

But  we  had  to  change  our  purpose  about  San 
Miguel,  for  a  storm  came  up  about  noon  that  so 
tossed  and  pitched  the  vessel  that  common  sense 
dictated  a  run  for  shelter.  Therefore  we  steered  for 
the  nearest  island  of  the  group — Fayal  (the  people 
there  pronounce  it  Fy-all,  and  put  the  accent  on  the 
first  syllable).  We  anchored  in  the  open  roadstead 
of  Horta,  half  a  mile  from  the  shore.  The  town 
has  eight  thousand  to  ten  thousand  inhabitants.  Its 
snow-white  houses  nestle  cozily  in  a  sea  of  fresh 
green  vegetation,  and  no  village  could  look  prettier 
or  more  attractive.  It  sits  in  the  lap  of  an  amphi- 
theater of  hills  which  are  three  hundred  to  seven 
hundred  feet  high,  and  carefully  cultivated  clear  to 
their  summits — not  a  foot  of  soil  left  idle.  Every 
farm  and  every  acre  is  cut  up  into  little  square  in- 
closures  by  stone  walls,  whose  duty  it  is  to  protect 
the  growing  products  from  the  destructive  gales  that 
blow  there.  These  hundreds  of  green  squares, 
marked  by  their  black  lava  walls,  make  the  hills 
look  like  vast  checker-boards. 

The  islands  belong  to  Portugal,  and  everything  in 
Fayal  has  Portuguese  characteristics  about  it.  But 
more  of  that  anon.  A  swarm  of  swarthy,  noisy, 
lying,  shoulder-shrugging,  gesticulating  Portuguese 
boatmen,  with  brass  rings  in  their  ears,  and  fraud  in 

15 


MARK    TWAIN 

their  hearts,  climbed  the  ship's  sides,  and  various 
parties  of  us  contracted  with  them  to  take  us  ashore 
at  so  much  a  head,  silver  coin  of  any  country.  We 
landed  under  the  walls  of  a  little  fort,  armed  with 
batteries  of  twelve  and  thirty- two  pounders,  which 
Horta  considered  a  most  formidable  institution,  but 
if  we  were  ever  to  get  after  it  with  one  of  our  tur- 
ret ed  monitors,  they  would  have  to  move  it  out  in 
the  country  if  they  wanted  it  where  they  could  go 
and  find  it  again  when  they  needed  it.  The  group 
on  the  pier  was  a  rusty  one — men  and  women, 
and  boys  and  girls,  all  ragged  and  barefoot,  un- 
combed and  unclean,  and  by  instinct,  education,  and 
profession,  beggars.  They  trooped  after  us,  and 
never  more,  while  we  tarried  in  Fayal,  did  we  get  rid 
of  them.  We  walked  up  the  middle  of  the  princi- 
pal street,  and  these  vermin  surrounded  us  on  all 
sides,  and  glared  upon  us;  and  every  moment  ex- 
cited couples  shot  ahead  of  the  procession  to  get  a 
good  look  back,  just  as  village  boys  do  when  they 
accompany  the  elephant  on  his  advertising  trip  from 
street  to  street.  It  was  very  flattering  to  me  to  be 
part  of  the  material  for  such  a  sensation.  Here  and 
there  in  the  doorways  we  saw  women,  with  fashion- 
able Portuguese  hoods  on.  This  hood  is  of  thick 
blue  cloth,  attached  to  a  cloak  of  the  same  stuff,  and 
is  a  marvel  of  ugliness.  It  stands  up  high,  and 
spreads  far  abroad,  and  is  unfathomably  deep.  It 
fits  like  a  circus  tent,  and  a  woman's  head  is  hidden 
away  in  it  like  the  man's  who  prompts  the  singers 
from  his  tin  shed  in  the  stage  of  an  opera.  There  is 
no  particle  of  trimming  about  this  monstrous  capote^ 

36 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

as  they  call  it — it  is  just  a  plain,  ugly  dead-blue 
mass  of  sail,  and  a  woman  can't  go  within  eight 
points  of  the  wind  with  one  of  them  on;  she  has  to 
go  before  the  wind  or  not  at  all.  The  general  style 
of  the  capote  is  the  same  in  all  the  islands,  and  will 
remain  so  for  the  next  ten  thousand  years,  but  each 
island  shapes  its  capotes  just  enough  differently  from 
the  others  to  enable  an  observer  to  tell  at  a  glance 
what  particular  island  a  lady  hails  from. 

The  Portuguese  pennies  or  reis  (pronounced  rays) 
are  prodigious.  It  takes  one  thousand  reis  to  make 
a  dollar,  and  all  financial  estimates  are  made  in  reis. 
We  did  not  know  this  until  after  we  had  found  it  out 
through  Blucher.  Blucher  said  he  was  so  happy 
and  so  grateful  to  be  on  solid  land  once  more,  that 
he  wanted  to  give  a  feast — said  he  had  heard  it  was 
a  cheap  land,  and  he  was  bound  to  have  a  grand 
banquet.  He  invited  nine  of  us,  and  we  ate  an  ex- 
cellent dinner  at  the  principal  hotel.  In  the  midst 
of  the  jollity  produced  by  good  cigars,  good  wine, 
and  passable  anecdotes,  the  landlord  presented  his 
bill.  Blucher  glanced  at  it  and  his  countenance  fell. 
He  took  another  look  to  assure  himself  that  his 
senses  had  not  deceived  him,  and  then  read  the  items 
aloud,  in  a  faltering  voice,  while  the  roses  in  his 
cheeks  turned  to  ashes: 

11  'Ten  dinners,  at  600  reis,  6,000  reis!'  Ruin 
and  desolation!" 

"  'Twenty-five  cigars,  at  100  reis,  2,500  reis!' 
Oh,  my  sainted  mother!" 

11  'Eleven  bottles  of  wine,  at  1,200  reis,  13,200 
reis!'     Be  with  us  all!" 

37 


MARK    TWAIN 

"  'Total,  twenty-one  thousand  seven  hun* 
dred  reis  !'  The  suffering  Moses ! — there  ain't  money 
enough  in  the  ship  to  pay  that  bill !  Go — leave  ma 
to  my  misery,  boys,  I  am  a  ruined  community." 

I  think  it  was  the  blankest -looking  party  I  evei 
saw.  Nobody  could  say  a  word.  It  was  as  if  every 
soul  had  been  stricken  dumb.  Wine  glasses  de 
seended  slowly  to  the  table,  their  contents  untasted. 
Cigars  dropped  unnoticed  from  nerveless  fingers. 
Each  man  sought  his  neighbor's  eye,  but  found  in  it 
no  ray  of  hope,  no  encouragement.  At  last  the 
fearful  silence  was  broken.  The  shadow  of  a  des- 
perate resolve  settled  upon  Blucher's  countenance 
like  a  cloud,  and  he  rose  up  and  said: 

"Landlord,  this  is  a  low,  mean  swindle,  and  I'll 
never,  never  stand  it.  Here's  a  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars,  sir,  and  it's  all  you'll  get — I'll  swim  in 
blood,  before  I'll  pay  a  cent  more." 

Our  spirits  rose  and  the  landlord's  fell — at  least 
we  thought  so;  he  was  confused  at  any  rate,  not- 
withstanding he  had  not  understood  a  word  that  had 
been  said.  He  glanced  from  the  little  pile  of  gold 
pieces  to  Blucher  several  times,  and  then  went  out. 
He  must  have  visited  an  American,  for,  when  he 
returned,  he  brought  back  his  bill  translated  into  a 
language  that  a  Christian  could  understand — thus: 

10  dinners,  6,000  reis,  or      ...  $6.00 
25  cigars,  2,500  reis,  or         ....      2.50 

11  bottles  wine,  13,200  reis,  or  .        .        .    13.20 

Total  21,700  reis,  or $21.70 

Happiness  reigned  once  more  in  Blucher's  dinner- 
party.    More  refreshments  were  ordered. 

38 


CHAPTER  VI 

1  THINK  the  Azores  must  be  very  little  known  in 
America.  Out  of  our  whole  ship's  company 
there  was  not  a  solitary  individual  who  knew  any- 
thing whatever  about  them.  Some  of  the  party, 
well  read  concerning  most  other  lands,  had  no  other 
information  about  the  Azores  than  that  they  were  a 
group  of  nine  or  ten  small  islands  far  out  in  the 
Atlantic,  something  more  than  half-way  between 
New  York  and  Gibraltar.  That  was  all.  These  con- 
siderations move  me  to  put  in  a  paragraph  of  dry 
facts  just  here. 

The  community  is  eminently  Portuguese — that  is 
to  say,  it  is  slow,  poor,  shiftless,  sleepy,  and  lazy. 
There  is  a  civil  governor,  appointed  by  the  King  of 
Portugal;  and  also  a  military  governor,  who  can 
assume  supreme  control  and  suspend  the  civil  gov- 
ernment at  his  pleasure.  The  islands  contain  a 
population  of  about  200,000,  almost  entirely  Portu- 
guese. Everything  is  staid  and  settled,  for  the 
country  was  one  hundred  years  old  when  Columbus 
discovered  America.  The  principal  crop  is  corn, 
and  they  raise  it  and  grind  it  just  as  their  great-great- 
great-grandfathers  did.  They  plow  with  a  board 
slightly  shod  with  iron;  their  trifling  little  harrows 
are   drawn   by  men   and  women;   small   windmills 

39 


MARK    TWAIN 

grind  the  corn,  ten  bushels  a  day,  and  there  is  one 
assistant  superintendent  to  feed  the  mill  and  a  gen- 
eral superintendent  to  stand  by  and  keep  him  from 
going  to  sleep.  When  the  wind  changes  they  hitch 
on  some  donkeys,  and  actually  turn  the  whole  upper 
half  of  the  mill  around  until  the  sails  are  in  proper 
position,  instead  of  fixing  the  concern  so  that  the 
sails  could  be  moved  instead  of  the  mill.  Oxen 
tread  the  wheat  from  the  ear,  after  the  fashion  prev- 
alent in  the  time  of  Methuselah.  There  is  not  a 
wheelbarrow  in  the  land — they  carry  everything  on 
their  heads,  or  on  donkeys,  or  in  a  wicker-bodied 
cart,  whose  wheels  are  solid  blocks  of  wood  and 
whose  axles  turn  with  the  wheel.  There  is  not  a 
modern  plow  in  the  islands,  or  a  threshing-machine. 
All  attempts  to  introduce  them  have  failed.  The 
good  Catholic  Portuguese  crossed  himself  and  prayed 
God  to  shield  him  from  all  blasphemous  desire  to 
know  more  than  his  father  did  before  him.  The 
climate  is  mild;  they  never  have  snow  or  ice,  and  I 
saw  no  chimneys  in  the  town.  The  donkeys  and 
the  men,  women,  and  children  of  a  family,  all  eat 
and  sleep  in  the  same  room,  and  are  unclean,  are 
ravaged  by  vermin,  and  are  truly  happy.  The 
people  lie,  and  cheat  the  stranger,  and  are  desper- 
ately ignorant,  and  have  hardly  any  reverence  for 
their  dead.  The  latter  trait  shows  how  little  better 
they  are  than  the  donkeys  they  eat  and  sleep  with. 
The  only  well-dressed  Portuguese  in  the  camp  are 
the  half  a  dozen  well-to-do  families,  the  Jesuit  priests, 
and  the  soldiers  of  the  little  garrison.  The  wages  of 
a  laborer  are  twenty  to  twenty-four  cents  a  day,  and 

40 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

those  of  a  good  mechanic  about  twice  as  much. 
They  count  it  in  reis  at  a  thousand  to  the  dollar,  and 
this  makes  them  rich  and  contented.  Fine  grapes 
used  to  grow  in  the  islands,  and  an  excellent  wine 
was  made  and  exported.  But  a  disease  killed  all 
the  vines  fifteen  years  ago,  and  since  that  time  no 
wine  has  been  made.  The  islands  being  wholly  of 
volcanic  origin,  the  soil  is  necessarily  very  rich. 
Nearly  every  foot  of  ground  is  under  cultivation, 
and  two  or  three  crops  a  year  of  each  article  are 
produced,  but  nothing  is  exported  save  a  few  oranges 
— chiefly  to  England.  Nobody  comes  here,  and  no- 
body goes  away.  News  is  a  thing  unknown  in  Fayal. 
A  thirst  for  it  is  a  passion  equally  unknown.  A 
Portuguese  of  average  intelligence  inquired  if  our 
civil  war  was  over?  because,  he  said,  somebody 
had  told  him  it  was — or,  at  least,  it  ran  in  his  mind, 
that  somebody  had  told  him  something  like  that! 
And  when  a  passenger  gave  an  officer  of  the  garri- 
son copies  of  the  Tribune,  the  Herald,  and  Times, 
he  was  surprised  to  find  later  news  in  them  from 
Lisbon  than  he  had  just  received  by  the  little 
monthly  steamer.  He  was  told  that  it  came  by 
cable.  He  said  he  knew  they  had  tried  to  lay  a 
cable  ten  years  ago,  but  it  had  been  in  his  mind, 
somehow,  that  they  hadn't  succeeded! 

It  is  in  communities  like  this  that  Jesuit  humbug- 
gery  flourishes.  We  visited  a  Jesuit  cathedral  nearly 
two  hundred  years  old,  and  found  in  it  a  piece  of 
the  veritable  cross  upon  which  our  Saviour  was  cruci- 
fied. It  was  polished  and  hard,  and  in  as  excellent 
a  state  of  preservation  as  if  the  dread  tragedy  on 

4i 


MARK    TWAIN 

Calvary  had  occurred  yesterday  instead  of  eighteen 
centuries  ago.  But  these  confiding  people  believe 
in  that  piece  of  wood  unhesitatingly. 

In  a  chapel  of  the  cathedral  is  an  altar  with  fac- 
ings of  solid  silver — at  least,  they  call  it  so,  and  I 
think  myself  it  would  go  a  couple  of  hundred  to  the 
ton  (to  speak  after  the  fashion  of  the  silver  miners), 
and  before  it  is  kept  forever  burning  a  small  lamp. 
A  devout  lady  who  died,  left  money  and  contracted 
for  unlimited  masses  for  the  repose  of  her  soul,  and 
also  stipulated  that  this  lamp  should  be  kept  lighted 
always,  day  and  night.  She  did  all  this  before  she 
died,  you  understand.  It  is  a  very  small  lamp,  and 
a  very  dim  one,  and  it  could  not  work  her  much 
damage,  I  think,  if  it  went  out  altogether. 

The  great  altar  of  the  cathedral,  and  also  three  or 
four  minor  ones,  are  a  perfect  mass  of  gilt  gimcracks 
and  gingerbread.  And  they  have  a  swarm  of  rusty, 
dusty,  battered  apostles  standing  around  the  filigree 
work,  some  on  one  leg  and  some  with  one  eye  out 
but  a  gamey  look  in  the  other,  and  some  with  two 
or  three  fingers  gone,  and  some  with  not  enough 
nose  left  to  blow — all  of  them  crippled  and  dis- 
couraged, and  fitter  subjects  for  the  hospital  than 
the  cathedral. 

The  walls  of  the  chancel  are  of  porcelain,  all 
pictured  over  with  figures  of  almost  life-size,  very 
elegantly  wrought,  and  dressed  in  the  fanciful  cos- 
tumes of  two  centuries  ago.  The  design  was  a  his- 
tory of  something  or  somebody,  but  none  of  us  were 
learned  enough  to  read  the  story.  The  old  father, 
reposing  under  a  store  close  by,  dated  1686,  might 

42 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

have    told    us    if    he   could   have    risen.     But   he 
didn't. 

As  we  came  down  through  the  town,  we  encoun- 
tered a  squad  of  little  donkeys  ready  saddled  for 
use.  The  saddles  were  peculiar,  to  say  the  least. 
They  consisted  of  a  sort  of  saw-buck,  with  a  small 
mattress  on  it,  and  this  furniture  covered  about  half 
the  donkey.  There  were  no  stirrups,  but  really 
such  supports  were  not  needed — to  use  such  a  saddle 
was  the  next  thing  to  riding  a  dinner-table — there 
was  ample  support  clear  out  to  one's  knee-joints. 
A  pack  of  ragged  Portuguese  muleteers  crowded 
around  us,  offering  their  beasts  at  half  a  dollar  an 
hour — more  rascality  to  the  stranger,  for  the  market 
price  is  sixteen  cents.  Half  a  dozen  of  us  mounted 
the  ungainly  affairs,  and  submitted  to  the  indignity 
of  making  a  ridiculous  spectacle  of  ourselves  through 
the  principal  streets  of  a  town  of  10,000  inhabitants. 

We  started.  It  was  not  a  trot,  a  gallop,  or  a 
canter,  but  a  stampede,  and  made  up  of  all  possible 
or  conceivable  gaits.  No  spurs  were  necessary. 
There  was  a  muleteer  to  every  donkey  and  a  dozen 
volunteers  besides,  and  they  banged  the  donkeys  with 
their  goad-sticks,  and  pricked  them  with  their  spikes, 
and  shouted  something  that  sounded  like  "Sekki- 
yah!"  and  kept  up  a  din  and  a  racket  that  was 
worse  than  Bedlam  itself.  These  rascals  were  all 
on  foot,  but  no  matter,  they  were  always  up  to  time 
— they  can  outrun  and  outlast  a  donkey.  Alto- 
gether ours  was  a  lively  and  picturesque  procession, 
and  drew  crowded  audiences  to  the  balconies 
wherever  we  went. 

43 


MARK    TWAIN 

Blucher  could  do  nothing  at  all  with  his  donkey. 
The  beast  scampered  zigzag  across  the  road  and  the 
others  ran  into  him ;  he  scraped  Blucher  against  carts 
and  the  corners  of  houses;  the  road  was  fenced  in 
with  high  stone  walls,  and  the  donkey  gave  him  a 
polishing  first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the  other,  but 
never  once  took  the  middle;  he  finally  came  to  the 
house  he  was  born  in  and  darted  into  the  parlor, 
scraping  Blucher  off  at  the  doorway.  After  re- 
mounting, Blucher  said  to  the  muleteer,  "Now, 
that's  enough,  you  know;  you  go  slow  hereafter." 
But  the  fellow  knew  no  English  and  did  not  under- 
stand, so  he  simply  said,  "Sekki-yah!"  and  the 
donkey  was  off  again  like  a  shot.  He  turned  a 
corner  suddenly,  and  Blucher  went  over  his  head. 
And,  to  speak  truly,  every  mule  stumbled  over  the 
two,  and  the  whole  cavalcade  was  piled  up  in  a 
heap.  No  harm  done.  A  fall  from  one  of  those 
donkeys  is  of  little  more  consequence  than  rolling 
off  a  sofa.  The  donkeys  all  stood  still  after  the 
catastrophe,  and  waited  for  their  dismembered  sad- 
dles to  be  patched  up  and  put  on  by  the  noisy 
muleteers.  Blucher  was  pretty  angry,  and  wanted 
to  swear,  but  every  time  he  opened  his  mouth  his 
animal  did  so  also,  and  let  off  a  series  of  brays  that 
drowned  all  other  sounds. 

It  was  fun,  skurrying  around  the  breezy  hills  and 
through  the  beautiful  canons.  There  was  that  rare 
thing,  novelty,  about  it;  it  was  a  fresh,  new,  ex- 
hilarating sensation,  this  donkey-riding,  and  worth  a 
hundred  worn  and  threadbare  home  pleasures. 

The  roads  were  a  wonder,  and  well  they  might  be. 

44 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Here  was  an  island  with  only  a  handful  of  people  in 
it — 25,000 — and  yet  such  fine  roads  do  not  exist 
in  the  United  States  outside  of  Central  Park.  Every- 
where you  go,  in  any  direction,  you  find  either  a 
hard,  smooth,  level  thoroughfare,  just  sprinkled  with 
black  lava  sand,  and  bordered  with  little  gutters 
neatly  paved  with  small  smooth  pebbles,  or  com- 
pactly paved  ones  like  Broadway.  They  talk  much 
of  the  Russ  pavement  in  New  York,  and  call  it  a 
new  invention — yet  here  they  have  been  using  it  in 
this  remote  little  isle  of  the  sea  for  two  hundred 
years!  Every  street  in  Horta  is  handsomely  paved 
with  the  heavy  Russ  blocks,  and  the  surface  is  neat 
and  true  as  a  floor — not  marred  by  holes  like  Broad- 
way. And  every  road  is  fenced  in  by  tall,  solid 
lava  walls,  which  will  last  a  thousand  years  in  this 
land  where  frost  is  unknown.  They  are  very  thick, 
and  are  often  plastered  and  whitewashed,  and  capped 
with  projecting  slabs  of  cut  stone.  Trees  from  gar- 
dens above  hang  their  swaying  tendrils  down,  and 
contrast  their  bright  green  with  the  whitewash  or 
the  black  lava  of  the  walls,  and  make  them  beauti- 
ful. The  trees  and  vines  stretch  across  these  nar- 
row roadways  sometimes,  and  so  shut  out  the  sun 
that  you  seem  to  be  riding  through  a  tunnel.  The 
pavements,  the  roads,  and  the  bridges  are  all  gov- 
ernment work. 

The  bridges  are  of  a  single  span — a  single  arch — 
of  cut  stone,  without  a  support,  and  paved  on  top 
with  flags  of  lava  and  ornamental  pebble  work. 
Everywhere  are  walls,  walls,  walls, — and  all  of  them 
tasteful  and  handsome — and  eternally  substantial; 

45 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  everywhere  are  those  marvelous  pavements,  so 
neat,  so  smooth,  and  so  indestructible.  And  if  ever 
roads  and  streets,  and  the  out  sides  of  houses,  were 
perfectly  free  from  any  sign  or  semblance  of  dirt  or 
dust  or  mud,  or  uncleanliness  of  any  kind,  it  is 
Horta,  it  is  Fayal.  The  lower  classes  of  the  people, 
in  their  persons  and  their  domiciles,  are  not  clean — 
but  there  it  stops — the  town  and  the  island  are 
miracles  of  cleanliness. 

We  arrived  home  again  finally,  after  a  ten-mile 
excursion,  and  the  irrepressible  muleteers  scampered 
at  our  heels  through  the  main  street,  goading  the 
donkeys,  shouting  the  everlasting  "Sekki-yah" 
and  singing  "John  Brown's  Body"  in  ruinous 
English. 

When  we  were  dismounted  and  it  came  to  set- 
tling, the  shouting  and  jawing  and  swearing  and 
quarreling  among  the  muleteers  and  with  us,  was 
nearly  deafening.  One  fellow  would  demand  a  dol- 
lar an  hour  for  the  use  of  his  donkey;  another 
claimed  half  a  dollar  for  pricking  him  up,  another  a 
quarter  for  helping  in  that  service,  and  about  four- 
teen guides  presented  bills  for  showing  us  the  way 
through  the  town  and  its  environs;  and  every  va- 
grant of  them  was  more  vociferous,  and  more  ve- 
hement, and  more  frantic  in  gesture  than  his  neigh- 
bor. We  paid  one  guide,  and  paid  for  one  muleteer 
to  each  donkey. 

The  mountains  on  some  of  the  islands  are  very 
high.  We  sailed  along  the  shore  of  the  Island  of 
Pico,  under  a  stately  green  pyramid  that  rose  up 
with  one  unbroken  sweep  from  our  very  feet  to  an 

46 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

altitude  of  7,613  feet,  and  thrust  its  summit  above 
the  white  clouds  like  an  island  adrift  in  a  fog! 

We  got  plenty  of  fresh  oranges,  lemons,  figs, 
apricots,  etc.,  in  these  Azores,  of  course.  But  I 
will  desist.  I  am  not  here  to  write  patent-office 
reports. 

We  are  on  our  way  to  Gibraltar,  and  shall  reach 
there  five  or  six  days  out  from  the  Azores. 


CHAPTER  VII 

A  WEEK  of  buffeting  a  tempestuous  and  relent- 
less sea;  a  week  of  seasickness  and  deserted 
cabins;  of  lonely  quarter-decks  drenched  with  spray 
— spray  so  ambitious  that  it  even  coated  the  smoke- 
stacks thick  with  a  white  crust  of  salt  to  their  very 
tops;  a  week  of  shivering  in  the  shelter  of  the  life- 
boats and  deck-houses  by  day,  and  blowing  suffo- 
cating "clouds"  and  boisterously  performing  at 
dominoes  in  the  smoking-room  at  night. 

And  the  last  night  of  the  seven  was  the  stormiest 
of  all.  There  was  no  thunder,  no  noise  but  the 
pounding  bows  of  the  ship,  the  keen  whistling  of 
the  gale  through  the  cordage,  and  the  rush  of  the 
seething  waters.  But  the  vessel  climbed  aloft  as  if 
she  would  climb  to  heaven — then  paused  an  instant 
that  seemed  a  century,  and  plunged  headlong  down 
again,  as  from  a  precipice.  The  sheeted  sprays 
drenched  the  decks  like  rain.  The  blackness  of 
darkness  was  everywhere.  At  long  intervals  a  flash 
of  lightning  clove  it  with  a  quivering  line  of  fire,  that 
revealed  a  heaving  world  of  water  where  was  nothing 
before,  kindled  the  dusky  cordage  to  glittering  sil- 
ver, and  lit  up  the  faces  of  the  men  with  a  ghastly 
luster ! 

Fear  drove  many  on  deck  that  were  used  to  avoid- 

48 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ing  the  night  winds  and  the  spray.  Some  thought 
the  vessel  could  not  live  through  the  night,  and  it 
seemed  less  dreadful  to  stand  out  in  the  midst  of  the 
wild  tempest  and  see  the  peril  that  threatened  than 
to  be  shut  up  in  the  sepulchral  cabins,  under  the 
dim  lamps,  and  imagine  the  horrors  that  were  abroad 
on  the  ocean.  And  once  out — once  where  they 
could  see  the  ship  struggling  in  the  strong  grasp  of 
the  storm — once  where  they  could  hear  the  shriek 
of  the  winds,  and  face  the  driving  spray  and  look 
out  upon  the  majestic  picture  the  lightnings  dis- 
closed, they  were  prisoners  to  a  fierce  fascination 
they  could  not  resist,  and  so  remained.  It  was  a 
wild  night — and  a  very,  very  long  one. 

Everybody  was  sent  scampering  to  the  deck  at 
seven  o'clock  this  lovely  morning  of  the  30th  of 
June  with  the  glad  news  that  land  was  in  sight !  It 
was  a  rare  thing  and  a  joyful,  to  see  all  the  ship's 
family  abroad  once  more,  albeit  the  happiness  that 
sat  upon  every  countenance  could  only  partly  con- 
ceal the  ravages  which  that  long  siege  of  storms  had 
wrought  there.  But  dull  eyes  soon  sparkled  with 
pleasure,  pallid  cheeks  flushed  again,  and  frames 
weakened  by  sickness  gathered  new  life  from  the 
quickening  influences  of  the  bright,  fresh  morning. 
Yea,  and  from  a  still  more  potent  influence:  the 
worn  castaways  were  to  see  the  blessed  land  again! 
— and  to  see  it  was  to  bring  back  that  mother-land 
that  was  in  all  their  thoughts. 

Within  the  hour  we  were  fairly  within  the  Straits 
of  Gibraltar,  the  tall  yellow-splotched  hills  of  Africa 
on  our  right,  with  their  bases  veiled  in  a  blue  haze 

49 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  their  summits  swathed  in  clouds — the  same 
being  according  to  Scripture,  which  says  that  "clouds 
and  darkness  are  over  the  land."  The  words  were 
spoken  of  this  particular  portion  of  Africa,  I  believe. 
On  our  left  were  the  granite-ribbed  domes  of  old 
Spain.  The  Strait  is  only  thirteen  miles  wide  in 
its  narrowest  part. 

At  short  intervals,  along  the  Spanish  shore,  were 
quaint-looking  old  stone  towers — Moorish,  we 
thought — but  learned  better  afterward.  In  former 
times  the  Morocco  rascals  used  to  coast  along  the 
Spanish  Main  in  their  boats  till  a  safe  opportunity 
seemed  to  present  itself,  and  then  dart  in  and  cap- 
ture a  Spanish  village,  and  carry  off  all  the  pretty 
women  they  could  find.  It  was  a  pleasant  business, 
and  was  very  popular.  The  Spaniards  built  these 
watch-towers  on  the  hills  to  enable  them  to  keep  a 
sharper  lookout  on  the  Moroccan  speculators. 

The  picture,  on  the  other  hand,  was  very  beauti- 
ful to  eyes  weary  of  the  changeless  sea,  and  by  and 
by  the  ship's  company  grew  wonderfully  cheerful. 
But  while  we  stood  admiring  the  cloud-capped  peaks 
and  the  lowlands  robed  in  misty  gloom,  a  finer 
picture  burst  upon  us  and  chained  every  eye  like  a 
magnet — a  stately  ship,  with  canvas  piled  on  canvas 
till  she  was  one  towering  mass  of  bellying  sail !  She 
came  speeding  over  the  sea  like  a  great  bird.  Africa 
and  Spain  were  forgotten.  All  homage  was  for  the 
beautiful  stranger.  While  everybody  gazed,  she 
swept  superbly  by  and  flung  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
to  the  breeze!  Quicker  than  thought,  hats  and 
handkerchiefs  flashed  in  the  air,  and  a  cheer  went 

So 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

up!  She  was  beautiful  before — she  was  radiant 
now.  Many  a  one  on  our  decks  knew  then  for  the 
first  time  how  tame  a  sight  his  country's  flag  is  at 
home  compared  to  what  it  is  in  a  foreign  land.  To 
see  it  is  to  see  a  vision  of  home  itself  and  all  its 
idols,  and  feel  a  thrill  that  would  stir  a  very  river 
of  sluggish  blood! 

We  were  approaching  the  famed  Pillars  of  Her- 
cules, and  already  the  African  one,  ' 'Ape's  Hill," 
a  grand  old  mountain  with  summit  streaked  with 
granite  ledges,  was  in  sight.  The  other,  the  great 
Rock  of  Gibraltar,  was  yet  to  come.  The  ancients 
considered  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  the  head  of  navi- 
gation and  the  end  of  the  world.  The  information 
the  ancients  didn't  have  was  very  voluminous. 
Even  the  prophets  wrote  book  after  book  and  epistle 
after  epistle,  yet  never  once  hinted  at  the  existence 
of  a  great  continent  on  our  side  of  the  water;  yet 
they  must  have  known  it  was  there,  I  should  think. 

In  a  few  moments  a  lonely  and  enormous  mass  of 
rock,  standing  seemingly  in  the  center  of  the  wide 
strait  and  apparently  washed  on  all  sides  by  the  sea, 
swung  magnificently  into  view,  and  we  needed  no 
tedious  traveled  parrot  to  tell  us  it  was  Gibraltar. 
There  could  not  be  two  rocks  like  that  in  one  king- 
dom. 

The  Rock  of  Gibraltar  is  about  a  mile  and  a  half 
long,  I  should  say,  by  1,400  to  1,500  feet  high,  and 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  wide  at  its  base.  One  side  and 
one  end  of  it  come  about  as  straight  up  out  of  the 
sea  as  the  side  of  a  house,  the  other  end  is  irregular 
and  the  other  side  is  a  steep  slant  which  an  army 

Si 


MARK    TWAIN 

would  find  very  difficult  to  climb.  At  the  foot  of 
this  slant  is  the  walled  town  of  Gibraltar — or  rather 
the  town  occupies  part  of  the  slant.  Everywhere — 
on  hillside,  in  the  precipice,  by  the  sea,  on  the 
heights, — everywhere  you  choose  to  look,  Gibraltar 
is  clad  with  masonry  and  bristling  with  guns.  It 
makes  a  striking  and  lively  picture,  from  whatsoever 
point  you  contemplate  it.  It  is  pushed  out  into  the 
sea  on  the  end  of  a  flat,  narrow  strip  of  land,  and  is 
suggestive  of  a  "gob  "  of  mud  on  the  end  of  a  shingle. 
A  few  hundred  yards  of  this  flat  ground  at  its  base 
belongs  to  the  English,  and  then,  extending  across 
the  strip  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Mediterranean, 
a  distance  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  comes  the  "Neutral 
Ground,"  a  space  two  or  three  hundred  yards  wide, 
which  is  free  to  both  parties. 

"Are  you  going  through  Spain  to  Paris ?"  That 
question  was  bandied  about  the  ship  day  and  night 
from  Fayal  to  Gibraltar,  and  I  thought  I  never  could 
get  so  tired  of  hearing  any  one  combination  of  words 
again,  or  more  tired  of  answering,  "I  don't  know." 

At  the  last  moment  six  or  seven  had  sufficient 
decision  of  character  to  make  up  their  minds  to  go, 
and  did  go,  and  I  felt  a  sense  of  relief  at  once — it 
was  forever  too  late,  now,  and  I  could  make  up  my 
mind  at  my  leisure,  not  to  go.  I  must  have  a  pro- 
digious quantity  of  mind;  it  takes  me  as  much  as  a 
week,  sometimes,  to  make  it  up. 

But  behold  how  annoyances  repeat  themselves. 
We  had  no  sooner  gotten  rid  of  the  Spain  distress 
than  the  Gibraltar  guides  started  another — a  tire- 
some repetition  of  a  legend  that  had  nothing  very 

52 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

astonishing  about  it,  even  in  the  first  place:  "That 
high  hill  yonder  is  called  the  Queen's  Chair;  it  is 
because  one  of  the  queens  of  Spain  placed  her  chair 
there  when  the  French  and  Spanish  troops  were  be- 
sieging Gibraltar,  and  said  she  would  never  move 
from  the  spot  till  the  English  flag  was  lowered  from 
the  fortresses.  If  the  English  hadn't  been  gallant 
enough  to  lower  the  flag  for  a  few  hours  one  day, 
she'd  have  had  to  break  her  oath  or  die  up  there." 

We  rode  on  asses  and  mules  up  the  steep,  narrow 
streets  and  entered  the  subterranean  galleries  the 
English  have  blasted  out  in  the  rock.  These  gal- 
leries are  like  spacious  railway  tunnels,  and  at  short 
intervals  in  them  great  guns  frown  out  upon  sea  and 
town  through  portholes  five  or  six  hundred  feet 
above  the  ocean.  There  is  a  mile  or  so  of  this  sub- 
terranean work,  and  it  must  have  cost  a  vast  deal 
of  money  and  labor.  The  gallery  guns  command 
the  peninsula  and  the  harbors  of  both  oceans,  but 
they  might  as  well  not  be  there,  I  should  think,  for 
an  army  could  hardly  climb  the  perpendicular  wall 
of  the  rock  anyhow.  Those  lofty  portholes  afford 
superb  views  of  the  sea,  though.  At  one  place, 
where  a  jutting  crag  was  hollowed  out  into  a  great 
chamber  whose  furniture  was  huge  cannon  and  whose 
windows  were  portholes,  a  glimpse  was  caught  of  a 
hill  not  far  away,  and  a  soldier  said: 

"That  high  hill  yonder  is  called  the  Queen's 
Chair;  it  is  because  a  queen  of  Spain  placed  her 
chair  there  once,  when  the  French  and  Spanish 
troops  were  besieging  Gibraltar,  and  said  she  would 
never  move  from  the  spot  till  the  English  flag  was 

53 


MARK    TWAIN 

lowered  from  the  fortresses.  If  the  English  hadn't 
been  gallant  enough  to  lower  the  flag  for  a  few 
hours  one  day,  she'd  have  had  to  break  her  oath 
or  die  up  there." 

On  the  topmost  pinnacle  of  Gibraltar  we  halted  a 
good  while,  and  no  doubt  the  mules  were  tired. 
They  had  a  right  to  be.  The  military  road  was 
good,  but  rather  steep,  and  there  was  a  good  deal 
of  it.  The  view  from  the  narrow  ledge  was  magnifi- 
cent; from  it  vessels  seeming  like  the  tiniest  little 
toy  boats  were  turned  into  noble  ships  by  the  tele- 
scopes ;  and  other  vessels  that  were  fifty  miles  away, 
and  even  sixty,  they  said,  and  invisible  to  the  naked 
eye,  could  be  clearly  distinguished  through  those 
same  telescopes.  Below,  on  one  side,  we  looked 
down  upon  an  endless  mass  of  batteries,  and  on  the 
other  straight  down  to  the  sea. 

While  I  was  resting  ever  so  comfortably  on  a 
rampart,  and  cooling  my  baking  head  in  the  delicious 
breeze,  an  officious  guide  belonging  to  another  party 
came  up  and  said: 

"Senor,  that  high  hill  yonder  is  called  the  Queen's 
Chair—" 

"Sir,  I  am  a  helpless  orphan  in  a  foreign  land. 
Have  pity  on  me.  Don't — now  don't  inflict  that 
most  in-FERNAL  old  legend  on  me  any  more  to- 
day!" 

There — I  had  used  strong  language,  after  prom- 
ising I  would  never  do  so  again;  but  the  provoca- 
tion was  more  than  human  nature  could  bear.  If 
you  had  been  bored  so,  when  you  had  the  noble 
panorama  of  Spain  and  Africa  and  the  blue  Mediter- 

54 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ranean  spread  abroad  at  your  feet,  and  wanted  to 
gaze,  and  enjoy,  and  surfeit  yourself  with  its  beauty 
in  silence,  you  might  have  even  burst  into  stronger 
language  than  I  did. 

Gibraltar  has  stood  several  protracted  sieges,  one 
of  them  of  nearly  four  years'  duration  (it  failed), 
and  the  English  only  captured  it  by  stratagem.  The 
wonder  is  that  anybody  should  ever  dream  of  trying 
so  impossible  a  project  as  the  taking  it  by  assault — 
and  yet  it  has  been  tried  more  than  once. 

The  Moors  held  the  place  twelve  hundred  years 
ago,  and  a  stanch  old  castle  of  theirs  of  that  date 
still  frowns  from  the  middle  of  the  town,  with  moss- 
grown  battlements  and  sides  well  scarred  by  shots 
fired  in  battles  and  sieges  that  are  forgotten  now. 
A  secret  chamber,  in  the  rock  behind  it,  was  dis- 
covered some  time  ago,  which  contained  a  sword  of 
exquisite  workmanship,  and  some  quaint  old  armor 
of  a  fashion  that  antiquaries  are  not  acquainted  with, 
though  it  is  supposed  to  be  Roman.  Roman  armor 
and  Roman  relics,  of  various  kinds,  have  been  found 
in  a  cave  in  the  sea  extremity  of  Gibraltar;  history 
says  Rome  held  this  part  of  the  country  about  the 
Christian  era,  and  these  things  seem  to  confirm  the 
statement. 

In  that  cave,  also,  are  found  human  bones,  crusted 
with  a  very  thick,  stony  coating,  and  wise  men  have 
ventured  to  say  that  those  men  not  only  lived  before 
the  flood,  but  as  much  as  ten  thousand  years  before 
it.  It  may  be  true — it  looks  reasonable  enough — 
but  as  long  as  those  parties  can't  vote  any  more, 
the  matter  can  be  of  no  great  public  interest.     In 

55 


MARK    TWAIN 

this  cave,  likewise,  are  found  skeletons  and  fossils 
of  animals  that  exist  in  every  part  of  Africa,  yet 
within  memory  and  tradition  have  never  existed  in 
any  portion  of  Spain  save  this  lone  peak  of  Gibraltar! 
So  the  theory  is  that  the  channel  between  Gibraltar 
and  Africa  was  once  dry  land,  and  that  the  low,  neu- 
tral neck  between  Gibraltar  and  the  Spanish  hills 
behind  it  was  once  ocean,  and,  of  course,  that  these 
African  animals,  being  over  at  Gibraltar  (after  rock, 
perhaps — there  is  plenty  there),  got  closed  out  when 
the  great  change  occurred.  The  hills  in  Africa, 
across  the  channel,  are  full  of  apes,  and  there  are 
now,  and  always  have  been,  apes  on  the  rock  of 
Gibraltar — but  not  elsewhere  in  Spain!  The  sub- 
ject is  an  interesting  one. 

There  is  an  English  garrison  at  Gibraltar  of  6,000 
or  7,000  men,  and  so  uniforms  of  flaming  red  are 
plenty;  and  red  and  blue,  and  undress  costumes  of 
snowy  white,  and  also  the  queer  uniform  of  the  bare- 
kneed  Highlander;  and  one  sees  soft-eyed  Spanish 
girls  from  San  Roque,  and  veiled  Moorish  beauties 
(I  suppose  they  are  beauties)  from  Tarifa,  and 
turbaned,  sashed,  and  trousered  Moorish  merchants 
from  Fez,  and  long-robed,  bare-legged,  ragged 
Mohammedan  vagabonds  from  Tetouan  and  Tangier, 
some  brown,  some  yellow,  and  some  as  black  as 
virgin  ink — and  Jews  from  all  around,  in  gaberdine, 
skull-cap,  and  slippers,  just  as  they  are  in  pictures 
and  theaters,  and  just  as  they  were  three  thousand 
years  ago,  no  doubt.  You  can  easily  understand 
that  a  tribe  (somehow  our  pilgrims  suggest  that  ex- 
pression, because  they  march  in  a  straggling  pro- 

56 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

cession  through  these  foreign  places  with  such  an 
Indian-like  air  of  complacency  and  independence 
about  them)  like  ours,  made  up  from  fifteen  or  six- 
teen states  of  the  Union,  found  enough  to  stare  at 
in  this  shifting  panorama  of  fashion  to-day. 

Speaking  of  our  pilgrims  reminds  me  that  we  have 
one  or  two  people  among  us  who  are  sometimes  an 
annoyance.  However,  I  do  not  count  the  Oracle  in 
that  list.  I  will  explain  that  the  Oracle  is  an  inno- 
cent old  ass  who  eats  for  four  and  looks  wiser  than 
the  whole  Academy  of  France  would  have  any  right 
to  look,  and  never  uses  a  one-syllable  word  when  he 
can  think  of  a  longer  one,  and  never  by  any  possible 
chance  knows  the  meaning  of  any  long  word  he 
uses,  or  ever  gets  it  in  the  right  place;  yet  he  will 
serenely  venture  an  opinion  on  the  most  abstruse 
subject,  and  back  it  up  complacently  with  quotations 
from  authors  who  never  existed,  and  finally  when 
cornered  will  slide  to  the  other  side  of  the  question, 
say  he  has  been  there  all  the  time,  and  come  back 
at  you  with  your  own  spoken  arguments,  only  with 
the  big  words  all  tangled,  and  play  them  in  your 
very  teeth  as  original  with  himself.  He  reads  a 
chapter  in  the  guide-books,  mixes  the  facts  all  up, 
with  his  bad  memory,  and  then  goes  off  to  inflict 
the  whole  mess  on  somebody  as  wisdom  which  has 
been  festering  in  his  brain  for  years,  and  which  he 
gathered  in  college  from  erudite  authors  who  are 
dead  now  and  out  of  print.  This  morning  at  break- 
fast he  pointed  out  of  the  window,  and  said: 

"Do  you  see  that  there  hill  out  there  on  that 
African  coast?     It's  one  of  them  Pillows  of  Her- 


MARK    TWAIN 

kewls,  I  should  say — and  there's  the  ultimate  one 
alongside  of  it." 

"The  ultimate  one — that  is  a  good  word — but 
the  Pillars  are  not  both  on  the  same  side  of  the 
strait."  (I  saw  he  had  been  deceived  by  a  care- 
lessly written  sentence  in  the  Guide-Book.) 

"Well,  it  ain't  for  you  to  say,  nor  for  me.  Some 
authors  states  it  that  way,  and  some  states  it  dif- 
ferent. Old  Gibbons  don't  say  nothing  about  it, 
— just  shirks  it  complete — Gibbons  always  done  that 
when  he  got  stuck — but  there  is  Rolampton,  what 
does  he  say?  Why,  he  says  that  they  was  both  on 
the  same  side,  and  Trinculian,  and  Sobaster,  and 
Syraccus,  and  Longomarganbl — " 

"Oh,  that  will  do — that's  enough.  If  you  have 
got  your  hand  in  for  inventing  authors  and  testi- 
mony, I  have  nothing  more  to  say — let  them  be  on 
the  same  side." 

We  don't  mind  the  Oracle.  We  rather  like  him. 
We  can  tolerate  the  Oracle  very  easily;  but  we  have 
a  poet  and  a  good-natured,  enterprising  idiot  on 
board,  and  they  do  distress  the  company.  The  one 
gives  copies  of  his  verses  to  consuls,  commanders, 
hotel-keepers,  Arabs,  Dutch, — to  anybody,  in  fact, 
who  will  submit  to  a  grievous  infliction  most  kindly 
meant.  His  poetry  is  all  very  well  on  shipboard, 
notwithstanding  when  he  wrote  an  "Ode  to  the 
Ocean  in  a  Storm"  in  one  half -hour,  and  an  "Apos- 
trophe to  the  Rooster  in  the  Waist  of  the  Ship" 
in  the  next,  the  transition  was  considered  to  be 
rather  abrupt;  but  when  he  sends  an  invoice  of 
rhymes  to  the  governor  of  Fayal  and  another  to  the 

58 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

commander-in-chief  and  other  dignitaries  in  Gib- 
raltar, with  the  compliments  of  the  Laureate  of  the 
Ship,  it  is  not  popular  with  the  passengers. 

The  other  personage  I  have  mentioned  is  young 
and  green,  and  not  bright,  not  learned,  and  not  wise. 
He  will  be,  though,  some  day,  if  he  recollects  the 
answers  to  all  his  questions.  He  is  known  about 
the  ship  as  the  "Interrogation  Point,"  and  this  by 
constant  use  has  become  shortened  to  "Interroga- 
tion." He  has  distinguished  himself  twice  already. 
In  Fayal  they  pointed  out  a  hill  and  told  him  it  was 
eight  hundred  feet  high  and  eleven  hundred  feet 
long.  And  they  told  him  there  was  a  tunnel  two 
thousand  feet  long  and  one  thousand  feet  high  run- 
ning through  the  hill,  from  end  to  end.  He  believed 
it.  He  repeated  it  to  everybody,  discussed  it,  and 
read  it  from  his  notes.  Finally,  he  took  a  useful 
hint  from  this  remark  which  a  thoughtful  old  pilgrim 
made: 

11  Well,  yes,  it  is  a  little  remarkable — singular 
tunnel  altogether — stands  up  out  of  the  top  of  the 
hill  about  two  hundred  feet,  and  one  end  of  it  sticks 
out  of  the  hill  about  nine  hundred!" 

Here  in  Gibraltar  he  corners  these  educated 
British  officers  and  badgers  them  with  braggadocio 
about  America  and  the  wonders  she  can  perform. 
He  told  one  of  them  a  couple  of  our  gunboats  could 
come  here  and  knock  Gibraltar  into  the  Mediter- 
ranean sea! 

At  this  present  moment,  half  a  dozen  of  us  are 
taking  a  private  pleasure  excursion  of  our  own 
devising.     We  form  rather  more  than  half  the  list  of 

59 


MARK    TWAIN 

white  passengers  on  board  a  small  steamer  bound 
for  the  venerable  Moorish  town  of  Tangier,  Africa. 
Nothing  could  be  more  absolutely  certain  than  that 
we  are  enjoying  ourselves.  One  cannot  do  other- 
wise who  speeds  over  these  sparkling  waters,  and 
breathes  the  soft  atmosphere  of  this  sunny  land. 
Care  cannot  assail  us  here.  We  are  out  of  its 
jurisdiction. 

We  even  steamed  recklessly  by  the  frowning  fort- 
ress of  Malabat  (a  stronghold  of  the  Emperor  of 
Morocco),  without  a  twinge  of  fear.  The  whole 
garrison  turned  out  under  arms,  and  assumed  a 
threatening  attitude — yet  still  we  did  not  fear.  The 
entire  garrison  marched  and  countermarched,  within 
the  rampart,  in  full  view — yet  notwithstanding  even 
this,  we  never  flinched. 

I  suppose  we  really  do  not  know  what  fear  is.  I 
inquired  the  name  of  the  garrison  of  the  fortress  of 
Malabat,  and  they  said  it  was  Mehemet  Ali  Ben 
Sancom.  I  said  it  would  be  a  good  idea  to  get  some 
more  garrisons  to  help  him;  but  they  said  no;  he 
had  nothing  to  do  but  hold  the  place,  and  that  he  was 
competent  to  do  that ;  had  done  it  two  years  already. 
That  was  evidence  which  one  could  not  well  refute. 
There  is  nothing  like  reputation. 

Every  now  and  then,  my  glove  purchase  in  Gib- 
raltar last  night  intrudes  itself  upon  me.  Dan  and 
the  ship's  surgeon  and  I  had  been  up  to  the  great 
square,  listening  to  the  music  of  the  fine  military 
bands,  and  contemplating  English  and  Spanish 
female  loveliness  and  fashion,  and,  at  9  o'clock, 
were  on  our  way  to  the  theater,  when  we  met  the 

60 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

General,  the  Judge,  the  Commodore,  the  Colonel, 
.and  the  Commissioner  of  the  United  States  of 
America  to  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  who  had  been 
to  the  Club  House,  to  register  their  several  titles 
and  impoverish  the  bill  of  fare;  and  they  told  us  to 
go  over  to  the  little  variety  store,  near  the  Hall  of 
Justice,  and  buy  some  kid  gloves.  They  said  they 
were  elegant,  and  very  moderate  in  price.  It  seemed 
a  stylish  thing  to  go  to  the  theater  in  kid  gloves, 
and  we  acted  upon  the  hint.  A  very  handsome 
young  lady  in  the  store  offered  me  a  pair  of  blue 
gloves.  I  did  not  want  blue,  but  she  said  they 
would  look  very  pretty  on  a  hand  like  mine.  The 
remark  touched  me  tenderly.  I  glanced  furtively  at 
my  hand,  and  somehow  it  did  seem  rather  a  comely 
member.  I  tried  a  glove  on  my  left,  and  blushed  a 
little.  Manifestly  the  size  was  too  small  for  me. 
But  I  felt  gratified  when  she  said: 

"Oh,  it  is  just  right!" — yet  I  knew  it  was  no  such 
thing. 

I  tugged  at  it  diligently,  but  it  was  discouraging 
work.     She  said: 

"Ah!  I  see  you  are  accustomed  to  wearing  kid 
gloves — but  some  gentlemen  are  so  awkward  about 
putting  them  on." 

It  was  the  last  compliment  I  had  expected.  I 
only  understand  putting  on  the  buckskin  article 
perfectly.  I  made  another  effort,  and  tore  the  glove 
from  the  base  of  the  thumb  into  the  palm  of  the 
hand — and  tried  to  hide  the  rent.  She  kept  up  her 
compliments,  and  I  kept  up  my  determination  to 
deserve  them  or  die: 

61 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Ah,  you  have  had  experience!"  [A  rip  down 
♦he  back  of  the  hand.]  "They  are  just  right  for 
you — your  hand  is  very  small — if  they  tear  you 
need  not  pay  for  them."  [A  rent  across  the  middle.] 
"I  can  always  tell  when  a  gentleman  understands 
putting  on  kid  gloves.  There  is  a  grace  about  it 
that  only  comes  with  long  practice."  [The  whole 
after  guard  of  the  glove  "fetched  away,"  as  the 
sailors  say,  the  fabric  parted  across  the  knuckles, 
and  nothing  was  left  but  a  melancholy  ruin.] 

I  was  too  much  flattered  to  make  an  exposure, 
and  throw  the  merchandise  on  the  angel's  hands.  I 
was  hot,  vexed,  confused,  but  still  happy;  but  I 
hated  the  other  boys  for  taking  such  an  absorbing 
interest  in  the  proceedings.  I  wished  they  were  in 
Jericho.  I  felt  exquisitely  mean  when  I  said  cheer- 
fully: 

"This  one  does  very  well;  it  fits  elegantly.  I  like 
a  glove  that  fits.  No,  never  mind,  ma'am,  never 
mind;  I'll  put  the  other  on  in  the  street.  It  is  warm 
here." 

It  was  warm.  It  was  the  warmest  place  I  ever 
was  in.  I  paid  the  bill,  and  as  I  passed  out  with  a 
fascinating  bow,  I  thought  I  detected  a  light  in  the 
woman's  eye  that  was  gently  ironical;  and  when  I 
looked  back  from  the  street,  and  she  was  laughing 
all  to  herself  about  something  or  other,  I  said  to 
myself,  with  withering  sarcasm,  "Oh,  certainly;  you 
know  how  to  put  on  kid  gloves,  don't  you? — a  self- 
complacent  ass,  ready  to  be  flattered  out  of  your 
senses  by  every  petticoat  that  chooses  to  take  the 
trouble  to  do  it!" 

62 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

The  silence  of  the  boys  annoyed  me.  Finally, 
Dan  said,  musingly: 

"Some  gentlemen  don't  know  how  to  put  on  kid 
gloves  at  all;  but  some  do." 

And  the  doctor  said  (to  the  moon,  I  thought) : 

"But  it  is  always  easy  to  tell  when  a  gentleman  is 
used  to  putting  on  kid  gloves." 

Dan  soliloquized,  after  a  pause: 

"Ah,  yes;  there  is  a  grace  about  it  that  only 
comes  with  long,  very  long  practice." 

"Yes,  indeed,  I've  noticed  that  when  a  man  hauls 
on  a  kid  glove  like  he  was  dragging  a  cat  out  of  an 
ash-hole  by  the  tail,  he  understands  putting  on  kid 
gloves;  he's  had  ex — " 

"Boys,  enough  of  a  thing's  enough!  You  think 
you  are  very  smart,  I  suppose,  but  I  don't.  And  if 
you  go  and  tell  any  of  those  old  gossips  in  the  ship 
about  this  thing,  I'll  never  forgive  you  for  it;  that's 
all." 

They  let  me  alone  then,  for  the  time  being.  We 
always  let  each  other  alone  in  time  to  prevent  ill 
feeling  from  spoiling  a  joke.  But  they  had  bought 
gloves,  too,  as  I  did.  We  threw  all  the  purchases 
away  together  this  morning.  They  were  coarse, 
unsubstantial,  freckled  all  over  with  broad  yellow 
splotches,  and  could  neither  stand  wear  nor  public 
exhibition.  We  had  entertained  an  angel  unawares, 
but  we  did  not  take  her  in.     She  did  that  for  us. 

Tangier!  A  tribe  of  stalwart  Moors  are  wading 
into  the  sea  to  carry  us  ashore  on  their  backs  from 
the  small  boats. 

63 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THIS  is  royal!  Let  those  who  went  up  through 
Spain  make  the  best  of  it — these  dominions  of 
the  Emperor  of  Morocco  suit  our  little  party  well 
enough.  We  have  had  enough  of  Spain  at  Gibraltar 
for  the  present.  Tangier  is  the  spot  we  have  been 
longing  for  all  the  time.  Elsewhere  we  have  found 
foreign-looking  things  and  foreign-looking  people, 
but  always  with  things  and  people  intermixed  that 
we  were  familiar  with  before,  and  so  the  novelty  of 
the  situation  lost  a  deal  of  its  force.  We  wanted 
something  thoroughly  and  uncompromisingly  foreign 
— foreign  from  top  to  bottom — foreign  from  center 
to  circumference — foreign  inside  and  outside  and 
all  around — nothing  anywhere  about  it  to  dilute  its 
foreignness — nothing  to  remind  us  of  any  other 
people  or  any  other  land  under  the  sun.  And  lo! 
in  Tangier  we  have  found  it.  Here  is  not  the  slight- 
est thing  that  ever  we  have  seen  save  in  pictures — 
and  we  always  mistrusted  the  pictures  before.  We 
cannot  any  more.  The  pictures  used  to  seem  ex- 
aggerations— they  seemed  too  weird  and  fanciful  for 
reality.  But  behold,  they  were  not  wild  enough — 
tney  were  not  fanciful  enough — they  have  not  told 
half  the  story.  Tangier  is  a  foreign  land  if  ever 
there  was  one;  and  the  true  spirit  of  it  can  never 

64 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

be  found  in  any  book  save  the  Arabian  Nights. 
Here  are  no  white  men  visible,  yet  swarms  of  hu- 
manity are  all  about  us.  Here  is  a  packed  and 
jammed  city  inclosed  in  a  massive  stone  wall  which 
is  more  than  a  thousand  years  old.  All  the  houses 
nearly  are  one  and  two  story;  made  of  thick  walls 
of  stone;  plastered  outside;  square  as  a  dry-goods 
box;  flat  as  a  floor  on  top;  no  cornices;  white- 
washed all  over — a  crowded  city  of  snowy  tombs! 
And  the  doors  are  arched  with  a  peculiar  arch  we 
see  in  Moorish  pictures;  the  floors  are  laid  in  vari- 
colored diamond  flags;  in  tessellated  many-colored 
porcelain  squares  wrought  in  the  furnaces  of  Fez; 
in  red  tiles  and  broad  bricks  that  time  cannot  wear; 
there  is  no  furniture  in  the  rooms  (of  Jewish  dwell- 
ings) save  divans — what  there  is  in  Moorish  ones 
no  man  may  know;  within  their  sacred  walls  no 
Christian  dog  can  enter.  And  the  streets  are  ori- 
ental— some  of  them  three  feet  wide,  some  six,  but 
only  two  that  are  over  a  dozen ;  a  man  can  blockade 
the  most  of  them  by  extending  his  body  across  them. 
Isn't  it  an  oriental  picture? 

There  are  stalwart  Bedouins  of  the  desert  here,  and 
stately  Moors,  proud  of  a  history  that  goes  back  to 
the  night  of  time;  and  Jews,  whose  fathers  fled 
hither  centuries  upon  centuries  ago;  and  swarthy 
Riffians  from  the  mountains — born  cutthroats — and 
original,  genuine  negroes,  as  black  as  Moses;  and 
howling  dervishes,  and  a  hundred  breeds  of  Arabs 
— all  sorts  and  descriptions  of  people  that  are  foreign 
and  curious  to  look  upon. 

And  their  dresses  are  strange  beyond  all  descrip- 

65 


MARK    TWAIN 

tion.  Here  is  a  bronzed  Moor  in  a  prodigious  white 
turban,  curiously  embroidered  jacket,  gold  and  crim- 
son sash  of  many  folds,  wrapped  round  and  round 
his  waist,  trousers  that  only  come  a  little  below  his 
knee,  and  yet  have  twenty  yards  of  stuff  in  them, 
ornamented  simitar,  bare  shins,  stockingless  feet, 
yellow  slippers,  and  gun  of  preposterous  length — a 
mere  soldier! — I  thought  he  was  the  Emperor  at 
least.  And  here  are  aged  Moors  with  flowing  white 
beards,  and  long  white  robes  with  vast  cowls;  and 
Bedouins  with  long,  cowled,  striped  cloaks,  and 
negroes  and  Riffians  with  heads  clean-shaven,  except 
a  kinky  scalp-lock  back  of  the  ear,  or  rather  up  on 
the  after  corner  of  the  skull,  and  all  sorts  of  bar- 
barians in  all  sorts  of  weird  costumes,  and  all  more 
or  less  ragged.  And  here  are  Moorish  women  who 
are  enveloped  from  head  to  foot  in  coarse  white 
robes  and  whose  sex  can  only  be  determined  by  the 
fact  that  they  only  leave  one  eye  visible,  and  never 
look  at  men  of  their  own  race,  or  are  looked  at  by 
them  in  public.  Here  are  five  thousand  Jews  in  blue 
gaberdines,  sashes  about  their  waists,  slippers  upon 
their  feet,  little  skull-caps  upon  the  backs  of  their 
heads,  hair  combed  down  on  the  forehead,  and  cut 
straight  across  the  middle  of  it  from  side  to  side — • 
the  self-same  fashion  their  Tangier  ancestors  have 
worn  for  I  don't  know  how  many  bewildering  cen- 
turies. Their  feet  and  ankles  are  bare.  Their 
noses  are  all  hooked,  and  hooked  alike.  They 
all  resemble  each  other  so  much  tnat  one  could 
almost  believe  they  were  of  one  family.  Their 
women  are  plump  and  pretty,  and  do  smile  upon  a 

66 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Christian  in  a  way  which  is  in  the  last  degree  com- 
forting. 

What  a  funny  old  town  it  is!  It  seems  like  pro- 
fanation to  laugh  and  jest  and  bandy  the  frivolous 
chat  of  our  day  amid  its  hoary  relics.  Only  the 
stately  phraseology  and  the  measured  speech  of  the 
sons  of  the  Prophet  are  suited  to  a  venerable  an- 
tiquity like  this.  Here  is  a  crumbling  wall  that  was 
old  when  Columbus  discovered  America;  was  old 
when  Peter  the  Hermit  roused  the  knightly  men  of 
the  Middle  Ages  to  arm  for  the  first  Crusade;  was 
old  when  Charlemagne  and  his  paladins  beleaguered 
enchanted  castles  and  battled  with  giants  and  genii 
in  the  fabled  days  of  the  olden  time;  was  old  when 
Christ  and  his  disciples  walked  the  earth ;  stood  where 
it  stands  to-day  when  the  lips  of  Memnon  were 
vocal,  and  men  bought  and  sold  in  the  streets  of 
ancient  Thebes! 

The  Phoenicians,  the  Carthaginians,  the  English, 
Moors,  Romans,  all  have  battled  for  Tangier — all 
have  won  it  and  lost  it.  Here  is  a  ragged,  oriental- 
looking  negro  from  some  desert  place  in  interior 
Africa,  filling  his  goatskin  with  water  from  a  stained 
and  battered  fountain  built  by  the  Romans  twelve 
hundred  years  ago.  Yonder  is  a  ruined  arch  of  a 
bridge  built  by  Julius  Caesar  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago.  Men  who  had  seen  the  infant  Saviour  in  the 
Virgin's  arms  have  stood  upon  it,  maybe. 

Near  it  are  the  ruins  of  a  dockyard  where  Caesar 
repaired  his  ships  and  loaded  them  with  grain  when 
he  invaded  Britain,  fifty  years  before  the  Christian 
era. 

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MARK    TWAIN 

Here,  under  the  quiet  stars,  these  old  streets 
seemed  thronged  with  the  phantoms  of  forgotten 
ages.  My  eyes  are  resting  upon  a  spot  where  stood 
a  monument  which  was  seen  and  described  by 
Roman  historians  less  than  two  thousand  years  ago, 
whereon  was  inscribed: 

"We  are  the  Canaanites.  We  are  they 
that  have  been  driven  out  of  the  land  of 
Canaan  by  the  Jewish  robber,  Joshua." 

Joshua  drove  them  out,  and  they  came  here.  Not 
many  leagues  from  here  is  a  tribe  of  Jews  whose 
ancestors  fled  thither  after  an  unsuccessful  revolt 
against  King  David,  and  these  their  descendants  are 
still  under  a  ban  and  keep  to  themselves. 

Tangier  has  been  mentioned  in  history  for  three 
thousand  years.  And  it  was  a  town,  though  a  queer 
one,  when  Hercules,  clad  in  his  lion-skin,  landed 
here,  four  thousand  years  ago.  In  these  streets  he 
met  Anytus,  the  king  of  the  country,  and  brained 
him  with  his  club,  which  was  the  fashion  among  gen- 
tlemen in  those  days.  The  people  of  Tangier  (called 
Tingis,  then)  lived  in  the  rudest  possible  huts,  and 
dressed  in  skins  and  carried  clubs,  and  were  as  sav- 
age as  the  wild  beasts  they  were  constantly  obliged 
to  war  with.  But  they  were  a  gentlemanly  race, 
and  did  no  work.  They  lived  on  the  natural  prod- 
ucts of  the  land.  Their  king's  country  residence 
was  at  the  famous  Garden  of  Hesperides,  seventy 
miles  down  the  coast  from  here.  The  garden,  with 
its  golden  apples  (oranges),  is  gone  now — no  vestige 
of  it  remains.  Antiquarians  concede  that  such  a 
personage  as  Hercules  did  exist  in  ancient  times, 

68 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  agree  that  he  was  an  enterprising  and  energetic 
man,  but  decline  to  believe  him  a  good,  bona  fide 
god,  because  that  would  be  unconstitutional. 

Down  here  at  Cape  Spartel  is  the  celebrated  cave 
of  Hercules,  where  that  hero  took  refuge  when  he 
was  vanquished  and  driven  out  of  the  Tangier 
country.  It  is  full  of  inscriptions  in  the  dead  lan- 
guages, which  fact  makes  me  think  Hercules  could 
not  have  traveled  much,  else  he  would  not  have 
kept  a  journal. 

Five  days'  journey  from  here — say  two  hundred 
miles — are  the  ruins  of  an  ancient  city,  of  whose 
history  there  is  neither  record  nor  tradition.  And 
yet  its  arches,  its  columns,  and  its  statues  proclaim 
it  to  have  been  built  by  an  enlightened  race. 

The  general  size  of  a  store  in  Tangier  is  about  that 
of  an  ordinary  shower-bath  in  a  civilized  land.  The 
Mohammedan  merchant,  tinman,  shoemaker,  or  ven- 
der of  trifles  sits  cross-legged  on  the  floor,  and 
reaches  after  any  article  you  may  want  to  buy.  You 
can  rent  a  whole  block  of  these  pigeonholes  for  fifty 
dollars  a  month.  The  market-people  crowd  the 
market-place  with  their  baskets  of  figs,  dates,  melons, 
apricots,  etc.,  and  among  them  file  trains  of  laden 
asses,  not  much  larger,  if  any,  than  a  Newfoundland 
dog.  The  scene  is  lively,  is  picturesque,  and  smells 
like  a  police  court.  The  Jewish  money-changers 
have  their  dens  close  at  hand;  and  all  day  long  are 
counting  bronze  coins  and  transferring  them  from 
one  bushel  basket  to  another.  They  don't  coin  much 
money  nowadays,  I  think.  I  saw  none  but  what 
was  dated  four  or  five  hundred  years  back,  and 

69 


MARK    TWAIN 

was  badly  worn  and  battered.  These  coins  are  not 
very  valuable.  Jack  went  out  to  get  a  napoleon 
changed,  so  as  to  have  money  suited  to  the  general 
cheapness  of  things,  and  came  back  and  said  he  had 
"swamped  the  bank;  had  bought  eleven  quarts  of 
coin,  and  the  head  of  the  firm  had  gone  on  the  street 
to  negotiate  for  the  balance  of  the  change."  I 
bought  nearly  half  a  pint  of  their  money  for  a  shil- 
ling myself.  I  am  not  proud  on  account  of  having 
so  much  money,  though.  I  care  nothing  for  wealth. 
The  Moors  have  some  small  silver  coins,  and  also 
some  silver  slugs  worth  a  dollar  each.  The  latter 
are  exceedingly  scarce — so  much  so  that  when  poor 
ragged  Arabs  see  one  they  beg  to  be  allowed  to  kiss  it. 

They  have  also  a  small  gold  coin  worth  two  dol- 
lars. And  that  reminds  me  of  something.  When 
Morocco  is  in  a  state  of  war,  Arab  couriers  carry 
letters  through  the  country,  and  charge  a  liberal 
postage.  Every  now  and  then  they  fall  into  the 
hands  of  marauding  bands  and  get  robbed.  There- 
fore, warned  by  experience,  as  soon  as  they  have 
collected  two  dollars'  worth  of  money  they  exchange 
it  for  one  of  those  little  gold  pieces,  and  when  rob- 
bers come  upon  them,  swallow  it.  The  stratagem 
was  good  while  it  was  unsuspected,  but  after  that  the 
marauders  simply  gave  the  sagacious  United  States 
mail  an  emetic  and  sat  down  to  wait. 

The  Emperor  of  Morocco  is  a  soulless  despot,  and 
the  great  officers  under  him  are  despots  on  a  smaller 
scale.  There  is  no  regular  system  of  taxation,  but 
when  the  Emperor  or  the  Bashaw  wants  money,  they 
levy  on  some  rich  man,  and  he  has  to  furnish  the 

70 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

cash  or  go  to  prison.  Therefore,  few  men  in  Morocco 
dare  to  be  rich.  It  is  too  dangerous  a  luxury. 
Vanity  occasionally  leads  a  man  to  display  wealth, 
but  sooner  or  later  the  Emperor  trumps  up  a  charge 
against  him — any  sort  of  one  will  do — and  confis- 
cates his  property.  Of  course,  there  are  many  rich 
men  in  the  empire,  but  their  money  is  buried,  and 
they  dress  in  rags  and  counterfeit  poverty.  Every 
now  and  then  the  Emperor  imprisons  a  man  who  is 
suspected  of  the  crime  of  being  rich,  and  makes 
things  so  uncomfortable  for  him  that  he  is  forced 
to  discover  where  he  has  hidden  his  money. 

Moors  and  Jews  sometimes  place  themselves  under 
the  protection  of  the  foreign  consuls,  and  then  they 
can  flout  their  riches  in  the  Emperor's  face  with 
impunity. 


CHAPTER  IX 

ABOUT  the  first  adventure  we  had  yesterday  af- 
h  ternoon,  after  landing  here,  came  near  finishing 
that  heedless  Blucher.  We  had  just  mounted  some 
mules  and  asses,  and  started  out  under  the  guardian- 
ship of  the  stately,  the  princely,  the  magnificent 
Hadji  Mohammed  Lamarty  (may  his  tribe  increase!), 
when  we  came  upon  a  fine  Moorish  mosque,  with 
tall  tower,  rich  with  checker-work  of  many-colored 
porcelain,  and  every  part  and  portion  of  the  edifice 
adorned  with  the  quaint  architecture  of  the  Alham- 
bra,  and  Blucher  started  to  ride  into  the  open  door- 
way. A  startling  "Hi-hi!"  from  our  camp  follow- 
ers, and  a  loud  "Halt!"  from  an  English  gentleman 
in  the  party,  checked  the  adventurer,  and  then  we 
were  informed  that  so  dire  a  profanation  is  it  for 
a  Christian  dog  to  set  foot  upon  the  sacred  threshold 
of  a  Moorish  mosque,  that  no  amount  of  purification 
can  ever  make  it  fit  for  the  faithful  to  pray  in  again. 
Had  Blucher  succeeded  in  entering  the  place,  he 
would  no  doubt  have  been  chased  through  the  town 
and  stoned;  and  the  time  has  been,  and  not  many 
years  ago  either,  when  a  Christian  would  have  been 
most  ruthlessly  slaughtered,  if  captured  in  a  mosque. 
We  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  handsome  tessellated 
pavements  within,  and  of  the  devotees  performing 

72 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

their  ablutions  at  the  fountains;  but  even  that  we 
took  that  glimpse  was  a  thing  not  relished  by  the 
Moorish  bystanders. 

Some  years  ago  the  clock  in  the  tower  of  the 
mosque  got  out  of  order.  The  Moors  of  Tangier 
have  so  degenerated  that  it  has  been  long  since 
there  was  an  artificer  among  them  capable  of  curing 
so  delicate  a  patient  as  a  debilitated  clock.  The 
great  men  of  the  city  met  in  solemn  conclave  to  con- 
sider how  the  difficulty  was  to  be  met.  They  dis- 
cussed the  matter  thoroughly  but  arrived  at  no  solu- 
tion.    Finally,  a  patriarch  arose  and  said: 

"Oh,  children  of  the  Prophet,  it  is  known  unto 
you  that  a  Portuguee  dog  of  a  Christian  clockmender 
pollutes  the  city  of  Tangier  with  his  presence.  Ye 
know,  also,  that  when  mosques  are  builded,  asses 
bear  the  stones  and  the  cement,  and  cross  the  sacred 
threshold.  Now,  therefore,  send  the  Christian  dog 
on  all  fours,  and  barefoot,  into  the  holy  place  to 
mend  the  clock,  and  let  him  go  as  an  ass!" 

And  in  that  way  it  was  done.  Therefore,  if 
Blucher  ever  sees  the  inside  of  a  mosque,  he  will 
have  to  cast  aside  his  humanity  and  go  in  his  natural 
character.  We  visited  the  jail,  and  found  Moorish 
prisoners  making  mats  and  baskets.  (This  thing  of 
utilizing  crime  savors  of  civilization.)  Murder  is 
punished  with  death.  A  short  time  ago  three  mur- 
derers were  taken  beyond  the  city  walls  and  shot. 
Moorish  guns  are  not  good,  and  neither  are  Moorish 
marksmen.  In  this  instance,  they  set  up  the  poor 
criminals  at  long  range,  like  so  many  targets,  and 
practised  on  them— kept  them  hopping  about  and 

73 


MARK    TWAIN 

dodging  bullets  for  half  an  hour  before  they  man- 
aged to  drive  the  center. 

When  a  man  steals  cattle,  they  cut  off  his  right 
hand  and  left  leg,  and  nail  them  up  in  the  market- 
place as  a  warning  to  everybody.  Their  surgery  is 
not  artistic.  They  slice  around  the  bone  a  little; 
then  break  off  the  limb.  Sometimes  the  patient  gets 
well;  but,  as  a  general  thing,  he  don't.  However, 
the  Moorish  heart  is  stout.  The  Moors  were  always 
brave.  These  criminals  undergo  the  fearful  opera- 
tion without  a  wince,  without  a  tremor  of  any  kind, 
without  a  groan !  No  amount  of  suffering  can  bring 
down  the  pride  of  a  Moor,  or  make  him  shame  his 
dignity  with  a  cry. 

Here,  marriage  is  contracted  by  the  parents  of  the 
parties  to  it.  There  are  no  valentines,  no  stolen 
interviews,  no  riding  out,  no  courting  in  dim  parlors, 
no  lovers'  quarrels  and  reconciliations — no  nothing 
that  is  proper  to  approaching  matrimony.  The 
young  man  takes  the  girl  his  father  selects  for  him, 
marries  her,  and  after  that  she  is  unveiled,  and  he 
sees  her  for  the  first  time.  If,  after  due  acquain- 
tance, she  suits  him,  he  retains  her ;  but  if  he  suspects 
her  purity,  he  bundles  her  back  to  her  father;  if  he 
finds  her  diseased,  the  same;  or  if,  after  just  and 
reasonable  time  is  allowed  her,  she  neglects  to  bear 
children,  back  she  goes  to  the  home  of  her  childhood. 

Mohammedans  here,  who  can  afford  it,  keep  a 
good  many  wives  on  hand.  They  are  called  wives, 
though  I  believe  the  Koran  only  allows  four  genuine 
wives — the  rest  are  concubines.  The  Emperor  of 
Morocco  don't  know  how  many  wives  he  has,  but 

74 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

thinks  he  has  five  hundred.  However,  that  is  near 
enough — a  dozen  or  so,  one  way  or  the  other,  don't 
matter. 

Even  the  Jews  in  the  interior  have  a  plurality  of 
wives. 

I  have  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  faces  of  several 
Moorish  women  (for  they  are  only  human,  and  will 
expose  their  faces  for  the  admiration  of  a  Christian 
dog  when  no  male  Moor  is  by),  and  I  am  full  of 
veneration  for  the  wisdom  that  leads  them  to  cover 
up  such  atrocious  ugliness. 

They  carry  their  children  at  their  backs,  in  a  sack, 
like  other  savages  the  world  over. 

Many  of  the  negroes  are  held  in  slavery  by  the 
Moors.  But  the  moment  a  female  slave  becomes 
her  master's  concubine  her  bonds  are  broken,  and 
as  soon  as  a  male  slave  can  read  the  first  chapter  of 
the  Koran  (which  contains  the  creed)  he  can  no 
longer  be  held  in  bondage. 

They  have  three  Sundays  a  week  in  Tangier.  The 
Mohammedan's  comes  on  Friday,  the  Jew's  on 
Saturday,  and  that  of  the  Christian  Consuls  on  Sun^ 
day.  The  Jews  are  the  most  radical.  The  Moor 
goes  to  his  mosque  about  noon  on  his  Sabbath,  as 
on  any  other  day,  removes  his  shoes  at  the  door, 
performs  his  ablutions,  makes  his  salaams,  pressing 
his  forehead  to  the  pavement  time  and  again,  says 
his  prayers,  and  goes  back  to  his  work. 

But  the  Jew  shuts  up  shop;  will  not  touch  copper 
or  bronze  money  at  all ;  soils  his  fingers  with  nothing 
meaner  than  silver  and  gold;  attends  the  synagogue 
devoutly;  will  not  cook  or  have  anything  to  do  with 

75 


MARK    TWAIN 

fire;  and  religiously  refrains  from  embarking  in  any 
enterprise. 

The  Moor  who  has  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Mecca  is 
entitled  to  high  distinction.  Men  call  him  Hadji, 
and  he  is  thenceforward  a  great  personage.  Hun- 
dreds of  Moors  come  to  Tangier  every  year,  and  em- 
bark for  Mecca.  They  go  part  of  the  way  in  Eng- 
lish steamers;  and  the  ten  or  twelve  dollars  they 
pay  for  passage  is  about  all  the  trip  costs.  They 
take  with  them  a  quantity  of  food,  and  when  the 
commissary  department  fails  they  ''skirmish,"  as 
Jack  terms  it  in  his  sinful,  slangy  way.  From  the 
time  they  leave  till  they  get  home  again,  they  never 
wash,  either  on  land  or  sea.  They  are  usually  gone 
from  five  to  seven  months,  and  as  they  do  not  change 
their  clothes  during  all  that  time,  they  are  totally 
unfit  for  the  drawing-room  when  they  get  back. 

Many  of  them  have  to  rake  and  scrape  a  long 
time  to  gather  together  the  ten  dollars  their  steamer 
passage  costs;  and  when  one  of  them  gets  back  he 
is  a  bankrupt  forever  after.  Few  Moors  can  ever 
build  up  their  fortunes  again  in  one  short  lifetime, 
after  so  reckless  an  outlay.  In  order  to  confine  the 
dignity  of  Hadji  to  gentlemen  of  patrician  blood  and 
possessions,  the  Emperor  decreed  that  no  man  should 
make  the  pilgrimage  save  bloated  aristocrats  who 
were  worth  a  hundred  dollars  in  specie.  But  be- 
hold how  iniquity  can  circumvent  the  law!  For  a 
consideration,  the  Jewish  money-changer  lends  the 
pilgrim  one  hundred  dollars  long  enough  for  him  to 
swear  himself  through,  and  then  receives  it  back  be- 
fore the  ship  sails  out  of  the  harbor! 

76 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Spain  is  the  only  nation  the  Moors  fear.  The 
reason  is,  that  Spain  sends  her  heaviest  ships  of  war 
and  her  loudest  guns  to  astonish  these  Moslems; 
while  America,  and  other  nations,  send  only  a  little 
contemptible  tub  of  a  ■  gunboat  occasionally.  The 
Moors,  like  other  savages,  learn  by  what  they  see; 
not  what  they  hear  or  read.  We  have  great  fleets  in 
the  Mediterranean,  but  they  seldom  touch  at  African 
ports.  The  Moors  have  a  small  opinion  of  England, 
France,  and  America,  and  put  their  representatives 
to  a  deal  of  red-tape  circumlocution  before  they 
grant  them  their  common  rights,  let  alone  a  favor. 
But  the  moment  the  Spanish  minister  makes  a  de- 
mand, it  is  acceded  to  at  once,  whether  it  be  just 
or  not. 

Spain  chastised  the  Moors  five  or  six  years  ago, 
about  a  disputed  piece  of  property  opposite  Gib- 
raltar, and  captured  the  city  of  Tetouan.  She  com- 
promised on  an  augmentation  of  her  territory; 
twenty  million  dollars  indemnity  in  money;  and 
peace.  And  then  she  gave  up  the  city.  But  she 
never  gave  it  up  until  the  Spanish  soldiers  had  eaten 
up  all  the  cats.  They  would  not  compromise  as  long 
as  the  cats  held  out.  Spaniards  are  very  fond  of 
cats.  On  the  contrary,  the  Moors  reverence  cats  as 
something  sacred.  So  the  Spaniards  touched  them 
on  a  tender  point  that  time.  Their  unfeline  conduct 
in  eating  up  all  the  Tetouan  cats  aroused  a  hatred 
toward  them  in  the  breasts  of  the  Moors,  to  which 
even  the  driving  them  out  of  Spain  was  tame  and 
passionless.  Moors  and  Spaniards  are  foes  forever 
now.     France  had  a  minister  here  once  who  embit- 

77 


MARK    TWAIN 

tered  the  nation  against  him  in  the  most  innocent 
way.  He  killed  a  couple  of  battalions  of  cats  (Tan- 
gier is  full  of  them)  and  made  a  parlor  carpet  out  of 
their  hides.  He  made  his  carpet  in  circles — first  a 
circle  of  old  gray  tomcats,  with  their  tails  all  point- 
ing toward  the  center;  then  a  circle  of  yellow  cats; 
next  a  circle  of  black  cats  and  a  circle  of  white  ones ; 
then  a  circle  of  all  sorts  of  cats;  and,  finally,  a  cen- 
terpiece of  assorted  kittens.  It  was  very  beauti- 
ful; but  the  Moors  curse  his  memory  to  this  day. 

When  we  went  to  call  on  our  American  Consul- 
General,  to-day,  I  noticed  that  all  possible  games  for 
parlor  amusement  seemed  to  be  represented  on  his 
center-tables.  I  thought  that  hinted  at  lonesome- 
ness.  The  idea  was  correct.  His  is  the  only  Ameri- 
can family  in  Tangier.  There  are  many  foreign 
consuls  in  this  place;  but  much  visiting  is  not  in- 
dulged in.  Tangier  is  clear  out  of  the  world,  and 
what  is  the  use  of  visiting  when  people  have 
nothing  on  earth  to  talk  about  ?  There  is  none.  So 
each  consul's  family  stays  at  home  chiefly,  and 
amuses  itself  as  best  it  can.  Tangier  is  full  of  inter- 
est for  one  day,  but  after  that  it  is  a  weary  prison. 
The  Consul-General  has  been  here  five  years,  and  has 
got  enough  of  it  to  do  him  for  a  century,  and  is 
going  home  shortly.  His  family  seize  upon  their 
letters  and  papers  when  the  mail  arrives,  read  them 
over  and  over  again  for  two  days  or  three,  talk  them 
over  and  over  again  for  two  or  three  more,  till  they 
wear  them  out,  and  after  that,  for  days  together, 
they  eat  and  drink  and  sleep,  and  ride  out  over  the 
same  old  road,  and  see  the  same  old  tiresome  things 

78 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

chat  even  decades  of  centuries  have  scarcely  changed, 
and  say  never  a  single  word!  They  have  literally 
nothing  whatever  to  talk  about.  The  arrival  of  an 
American  man-of-war  is  a  godsend  to  them.  "Oh, 
solitude,  where  are  the  charms  which  sages  have 
seen  in  thy  face?"  It  is  the  completest  exile  that  I 
can  conceive  of.  I  would  seriously  recommend  to 
the  government  of  the  United  States  that  when  a 
man  commits  a  crime  so  heinous  that  the  law  pro- 
vides no  adequate  punishment  for  it,  they  make  him 
Consul- General  to  Tangier. 

I  am  glad  to  have  seen  Tangier — the  second 
oldest  town  in  the  world.  But  I  am  ready  to  bid  it 
good-by,  I  believe. 

We  shall  go  hence  to  Gibraltar  this  evening  or  in 
the  morning;  and  doubtless  the  Quaker  City  will  sail 
from  that  port  within  the  next  forty-eight  hours. 


CHAPTER  X 

WE  passed  the  Fourth  of  July  on  board  the 
Quaker  City,  in  mid-ocean.  It  was  in  all  re- 
spects a  characteristic  Mediterranean  day — fault- 
lessly beautiful.  A  cloudless  sky;  a  refreshing  sum- 
mer wind;  a  radiant  sunshine  that  glinted  cheerily 
from  dancing  wavelets  instead  of  crested  mountains 
of  water;  a  sea  beneath  us  that  was  so  wonderfully 
blue,  so  richly,  brilliantly  blue,  that  it  overcame 
the  dullest  sensibilities  with  the  spell  of  its  fascina- 
tion. 

They  even  have  fine  sunsets  on  the  Mediterranean 
— a  thing  that  is  certainly  rare  in  most  quarters  of 
the  globe.  The  evening  we  sailed  away  from  Gib- 
raltar, that  hard-featured  rock  was  swimming  in  a 
creamy  mist  so  rich,  so  soft,  so  enchantingly  vague 
and  dreamy,  that  even  the  Oracle,  that  serene,  that 
inspired,  that  overpowering  humbug,  scorned  the 
dinner-gong  and  tarried  to  worship! 

He  said:  "Well,  that's  gorgis,  ain't  it!  They 
don't  have  none  of  them  things  in  our  parts,  do 
they?  I  consider  that  them  effects  is  on  account  of 
the  superior  refragability,  as  you  may  say,  of  the 
sun's  diramic  combination  with  the  lymphatic  forces 
of  the  perihelion  of  Jubiter.  What  should  you 
think?" 

80 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"Oh,  go  to  bed!"  Dan  said  that,  and  went 
away. 

"Oh,  yes,  it's  all  very  well  to  say  go  to  bed  when 
a  man  makes  an  argument  which  another  man  can't 
answer.  Dan  don't  never  stand  any  chance  in  an 
argument  with  me.  And  he  knows  it,  too.  What 
should  you  say,  Jack?" 

"Now,  doctor,  don't  you  come  bothering  around 
me  with  that  dictionary  bosh.  I  don't  do  you  any 
harm,  do  I?    Then  you  let  me  alone." 

"He's  gone,  too.  Well,  them  fellows  have  all 
tackled  the  old  Oracle,  as  they  say,  but  the  old 
man's  most  too  many  for  'em.  Maybe  the  Poet 
Lariat  ain't  satisfied  with  them  deductions?" 

The  poet  replied  with  a  barbarous  rhyme,  and 
went  below. 

"Tears  that  he  can't  qualify,  neither.  Well,  I 
didn't  expect  nothing  out  of  him.  I  never  see  one 
of  them  poets  yet  that  knowed  anything.  He'll 
go  down,  now,  and  grind  out  about  four  reams  of 
the  awfullest  slush  about  that  old  rock,  and  give  it 
to  a  consul  or  a  pilot  or  a  nigger,  or  anybody  he 
comes  across  first  which  he  can  impose  on.  Pity 
but  somebody 'd  take  that  poor  old  lunatic  and  dig 
all  that  poetry  rubbage  out  of  him.  Why  can't  a 
man  put  his  intellect  onto  things  that's  some  value? 
Gibbons  and  Hippocratus  and  Sarcophagus,  and 
all  them  old  ancient  philosophers,  was  down  on 
poets — " 

"Doctor,"  I  said,  "you  are  going  to  invent  au- 
thorities now,  and  I'll  leave  you,  too.  I  always  en- 
joy your  conversation,  notwithstanding  the  luxuri- 

81 


MARK    TWAIN 

ance  of  your  syllables,  when  the  philosophy  you 
offer  rests  on  your  own  responsibility ;  but  when  you 
begin  to  soar — when  you  begin  to  support  it  with 
the  evidence  of  authorities  who  are  the  creations  of 
your  own  fancy,  I  lose  confidence." 

That  was  the  way  to  flatter  the  doctor.  He  con- 
sidered it  a  sort  of  acknowledgment  on  my  part  of  a 
fear  to  argue  with  him.  He  was  always  persecuting 
the  passengers  with  abstruse  propositions  framed  in 
language  that  no  man  could  understand,  and  they 
endured  the  exquisite  torture  a  minute  or  two  and 
then  abandoned  the  field.  A  triumph  like  this,  over 
half  a  dozen  antagonists,  was  sufficient  for  one  day; 
from  that  time  forward  he  would  patrol  the  decks 
beaming  blandly  upon  all  comers,  and  so  tranquilly, 
blissfully  happy! 

But  I  digress.  The  thunder  of  our  two  brave 
cannon  announced  the  Fourth  of  July,  at  daylight, 
to  all  who  were  awake.  But  many  of  us  got  our 
information  at  a  later  hour,  from  the  almanac.  All 
the  flags  were  sent  aloft,  except  half  a  dozen  that 
were  needed  to  decorate  portions  of  the  ship  below, 
and  in  a  short  time  the  vessel  assumed  a  holiday  ap- 
pearance. During  the  morning,  meetings  were  held 
and  all  manner  of  committees  set  to  work  on  the 
celebration  ceremonies.  In  the  afternoon  the  ship's 
company  assembled  aft,  on  deck,  under  the  awnings; 
the  flute,  the  asthmatic  melodeon,  and  the  consump- 
tive clarinet,  crippled  the  "Star-Spangled  Banner," 
the  choir  chased  it  to  cover,  and  George  came  in  with 
a  peculiarly  lacerating  screech  on  the  final  note  and 
slaughtered  it.     Nobody  mourned. 

82 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

We  carried  out  the  corpse  on  three  cheers  (that 
joke  was  not  intentional  and  I  do  not  indorse  it),  and 
then  the  President,  throned  behind  a  cable-locker 
with  a  national  flag  spread  over  it,  announced  the 
"Reader,"  who  rose  up  and  read  that  same  old 
Declaration  of  Independence  which  we  have  all 
listened  to  so  often  without  paying  any  attention  to 
what  it  said;  and  after  that  the  President  piped  the 
Orator  of  the  Day  to  quarters  and  he  made  that 
same  old  speech  about  our  national  greatness  which 
we  so  religiously  believe  and  so  fervently  applaud. 
Now  came  the  choir  into  court  again,  with  the  com- 
plaining  instruments,  and  assaulted  "Hail  Columbia" ; 
and  when  victory  hung  wavering  in  the  scale,  George 
returned  with  his  dreadful  wild-goose  stop  turned  on, 
and  the  choir  won,  of  course.  A  minister  pro- 
nounced the  benediction,  and  the  patriotic  little 
gathering  disbanded.  The  Fourth  of  July  was  safe, 
as  far  as  the  Mediterranean  was  concerned. 

At  dinner  in  the  evening,  a  well-written  original 
poem  was  recited  with  spirit  by  one  of  the  ship's 
captains,  and  thirteen  regular  toasts  were  washed 
down  with  several  baskets  of  champagne.  The 
speeches  were  bad — execrable,  almost  without  ex- 
ception. In  fact,  without  any  exception,  but  one. 
Captain  Duncan  made  a  good  speech;  he  made  the 
only  good  speech  of  the  evening.     He  said: 

"Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — May  we  all  live  to 
a  green  old  age,  and  be  prosperous  and  happy. 
Steward,  bring  up  another  basket  of  champagne." 

It  was  regarded  as  a  very  able  effort. 

The  festivities,  so  to  speak,  closed  with  another  of 

83 


MARK    TWAIN 

those  miraculous  balls  on  the  promenade  deck.  We 
were  not  used  to  dancing  on  an  even  keel,  though, 
and  it  was  only  a  questionable  success.  But  take  it 
altogether,  it  was  a  bright,  cheerful,  pleasant  Fourth. 

Toward  nightfall,  the  next  evening,  we  steamed 
into  the  great  artificial  harbor  of  this  noble  city  of 
Marseilles,  and  saw  the  dying  sunlight  gild  its 
clustering  spires  and  ramparts,  and  flood  its  leagues 
of  environing  verdure  with  a  mellow  radiance  that 
touched  with  an  added  charm  the  white  villas  that 
flecked  the  landscape  far  and  near.  [Copyright  se- 
cured according  to  law.] 

There  were  no  stages  out,  and  we  could  not  get 
on  the  pier  from  the  ship.  It  was  annoying.  We 
were  full  of  enthusiasm — we  wanted  to  see  France! 
Just  at  nightfall  our  party  of  three  contracted  with  a 
waterman  for  the  privilege  of  using  his  boat  as  a 
bridge — its  stern  was  at  our  companion-ladder  and 
its  bow  touched  the  pier.  We  got  in  and  the  fellow 
backed  out  into  the  harbor.  I  told  him  in  French 
that  all  we  wanted  was  to  walk  over  his  thwarts  and 
step  ashore,  and  asked  him  what  he  went  away  out 
there  for?  He  said  he  could  not  understand  me.  I 
repeated.  Still,  he  could  not  understand.  He  ap- 
peared to  be  very  ignorant  of  French.  The  doctor 
tried  him,  but  he  could  not  understand  the  doctor. 
I  asked  this  boatman  to  explain  his  conduct,  which 
he  did;  and  then  I  couldn't  understand  him.  Dan 
said : 

''Oh,  go  to  the  pier,  you  old  fool — that's  where 
we  want  to  go!" 

We  reasoned  calmly  with  Dan  that  it  was  useless 

8jl 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

to  speak  to  this  foreigner  in  English — that  he  had 
better  let  us  conduct  this  business  in  the  French 
language  and  not  let  the  stranger  see  how  unculti- 
vated he  was. 

"Well,  go  on,  go  on,"  he  said,  "don't  mind  me. 
I  don't  wish  to  interfere.  Only,  if  you  go  on  telling 
him  in  your  kind  of  French  he  never  will  find  out 
where  we  want  to  go  to.  That  is  what  I  think  about 
it." 

We  rebuked  him  severely  for  this  remark,  and  said 
we  never  knew  an  ignorant  person  yet  but  was 
prejudiced.  The  Frenchman  spoke  again,  and  the 
doctor  said: 

"There,  now,  Dan,  he  says  he  is  going  to  allez  to  the 
douain.  Means  he  is  going  to  the  hotel.  Oh,  cer- 
tainly— we  don't  know  the  French  language." 

This  was  a  crusher,  as  Jack  would  say.  It  silenced 
further  criticism  from  the  disaffected  member.  We 
coasted  past  the  sharp  bows  of  a  navy  of  great  steam- 
ships, and  stopped  at  last  at  a  government  building 
on  a  stone  pier.  It  was  easy  to  remember  then  that 
the  douain  was  the  custom-house,  and  not  the  hotel. 
We  did  not  mention  it,  however.  With  winning 
French  politeness,  the  officers  merely  opened  and 
closed  our  satchels,  declined  to  examine  our  pass- 
ports, and  sent  us  on  our  way.  We  stopped  at  the 
first  cafe  we  came  to,  and  entered.  An  old  woman 
seated  us  at  a  table  and  waited  for  orders.  The 
doctor  said: 

"Avez-vous  du  vin?" 

The  dame  looked  perplexed.  The  doctor  said 
again,  with  elaborate  distinctness  of  articulation: 

85 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Avez-vous  du — vin!" 

The  dame  looked  more  perplexed  than  before.  I 
said: 

"Doctor,  there  is  a  flaw  in  your  pronunciation 
somewhere.  Let  me  try  her.  Madame,  avez-vous 
du  vin?  It  isn't  any  use,  doctor — take  the  wit- 
ness." 

"Madame,  avez-vous  du  vin — ou  fromage — pain 
— pickled  pigs'  feet — beurre — des  cefs — du  beuf — 
horseradish,  sauer-kraut,  hog  and  hominy — any- 
thing, anything  in  the  world  that  can  stay  a  Christian 
stomach!" 

She  said: 

"Bless  you,  why  didn't  you  speak  English  be- 
fore?— I  don't  know  anything  about  your  plagued 
French!" 

The  humiliating  taunts  of  the  disaffected  member 
spoiled  the  supper,  and  we  despatched  it  in  angry 
silence  and  got  away  as  soon  as  we  could.  Here 
we  were  in  beautiful  France — in  a  vast  stone  house 
of  quaint  architecture — surrounded  by  all  manner 
of  curiously  worded  French  signs — stared  at  by 
strangely  habited,  bearded  French  people — every- 
thing gradually  and  surely  forcing  upon  us  the  cov- 
eted consciousness  that  at  last,  and  beyond  all  ques- 
tion, we  were  in  beautiful  France  and  absorbing  its 
nature  to  the  forgetfulness  of  everything  else,  and 
coming  to  feel  the  happy  romance  of  the  thing  in 
all  its  enchanting  delightfulness — and  to  think  of  this 
skinny  veteran  intruding  with  her  vile  English,  at 
such  a  moment,  to  blow  the  fair  vision  to  the  winds? 
It  was  exasperating. 

86 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

We  set  out  to  find  the  center  of  the  city,  inquir- 
ing the  direction  every  now  and  then.  We  never 
did  succeed  in  making  anybody  understand  just  ex- 
actly what  we  wanted,  and  neither  did  we  ever  suc- 
ceed in  comprehending  just  exactly  what  they  said 
in  reply — but  then  they  always  pointed — they  always 
did  that,  and  we  bowed  politely  and  said  "Merci, 
Monsieur,"  and  so  it  was  a  blighting  triumph  over 
the  disaffected  member,  anyway.  He  was  restive 
under  these  victories  and  often  asked: 

"What  did  that  pirate  say?" 

"Why,  he  told  us  which  way  to  go,  to  find  the 
Grand  Casino." 

"Yes,  but  what  did  he  sayV 

"Oh,  it  don't  matter  what  he  said — we  under- 
stood him.  These  are  educated  people — not  Eke 
that  absurd  boatman." 

"Well,  I  wish  they  were  educated  enough  to  tell 
a  man  a  direction  that  goes  somewhere — for  we've 
been  going  around  in  a  circle  for  an  hour — I've 
passed  this  same  old  drug  store  seven  times." 

We  said  it  was  a  low,  disreputable  falsehood  (but 
we  knew  it  was  not).  It  was  plain  that  it  would  not 
do  to  pass  that  drug  store  again,  though — we  might 
go  on  asking  directions,  but  we  must  cease  from 
following  finger-pointings  if  we  hoped  to  check  the 
suspicions  of  the  disaffected  member. 

A  long  walk  through  smooth,  asphaltum-paved 
streets,  bordered  by  blocks  of  vast  new  mercantile 
houses  of  cream-colored  stone, — every  house  and 
every  block  precisely  like  all  the  other  houses  and 
all  the  other  blocks  for  a  mile,  and  all  brilliantly 

87 


MARK    TWAIN 

lighted, — brought  us  at  last  to  the  principal  thorough- 
fare. On  every  hand  were  bright  colors,  flashing 
constellations  of  gas-burners,  gaily  dressed  men  and 
women  thronging  the  sidewalks — hurry,  life,  activity, 
cheerfulness,  conversation,  and  laughter  everywhere ! 
We  found  the  Grand  Hotel  du  Louvre  et  de  la  Paix, 
and  wrote  down  who  we  were,  where  we  were  born, 
what  our  occupations  were,  the  place  we  came  from 
last,  whether  we  were  married  or  single,  how  we  liked 
it,  how  old  we  were,  where  we  were  bound  for  and 
when  we  expected  to  get  there,  and  a  great  deal  of 
information  of  similar  importance — all  for  the  benefit 
of  the  landlord  and  the  secret  police.  We  hired  a 
guide  and  began  the  business  of  sight-seeing  im- 
mediately. That  first  night  on  French  soil  was  a 
stirring  one.  I  cannot  think  of  half  the  places  we 
went  to,  or  what  we  particularly  saw;  we  had  no 
disposition  to  examine  carefully  into  anything  at  all 
■ — we  only  wanted  to  glance  and  go — to  move,  keep 
moving!  The  spirit  of  the  country  was  upon  us. 
We  sat  down,  finally,  at  a  late  hour,  in  the  great 
Casino,  and  called  for  unstinted  champagne.  It  is 
so  easy  to  be  bloated  aristocrats  where  it  costs 
nothing  of  consequence !  There  were  about  five  hun- 
dred people  in  that  dazzling  place,  I  suppose,  though 
the  walls  being  papered  entirely  with  mirrors,  so 
to  speak,  one  could  not  really  tell  but  that  there 
were  a  hundred  thousand.  Young,  daintily  dressed 
exquisites  and  young,  stylishly  dressed  women,  and 
also  old  gentlemen  and  old  ladies,  sat  in  couples  and 
groups  about  innumerable  marble-topped  tables, 
and  ate  fancy  suppers,   drank  wine,  and  kept  up 

88 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

a  chattering  din  of  conversation  that  was  dazing  to 
the  senses.  There  was  a  stage  at  the  far  end,  and 
a  large  orchestra;  and  every  now  and  then  actors 
and  actresses  in  preposterous  comic  dresses  came 
out  and  sang  the  most  extravagantly  funny  songs, 
to  judge  by  their  absurd  actions;  but  that  audience 
merely  suspended  its  chatter,  stared  cynically,  and 
never  once  smiled,  never  once  applauded!  I  had 
always  thought  that  Frenchmen  were  ready  to  laugh 
at  anything. 


CHAPTER  XI 

WE  are  getting  foreignized  rapidly,  and  with 
facility.  We  are  getting  reconciled  to  halls 
and  bed-chambers  with  unhomelike  stone  floors,  and 
no  carpets — floors  that  ring  to  the  tread  of  one's 
heels  with  a  sharpness  that  is  death  to  sentimental 
musing.  We  are  getting  used  to  tidy,  noiseless 
waiters,  who  glide  hither  and  thither,  and  hover 
about  your  back  and  your  elbows  like  butterflies, 
quick  to  comprehend  orders,  quick  to  fill  them; 
thankful  for  a  gratuity  without  regard  to  the  amount ; 
and  always  polite — never  otherwise  than  polite. 
That  is  the  strangest  curiosity  yet — a  really  polite 
hotel  waiter  who  isn't  an  idiot.  We  are  getting 
used  to  driving  right  into  the  central  court  of  the 
hotel,  in  the  midst  of  a  fragrant  circle  of  vines  and 
flowers,  and  in  the  midst,  also,  of  parties  of  gentle- 
men sitting  quietly  reading  the  paper  and  smoking. 
We  are  getting  used  to  ice  frozen  by  artificial  process 
in  ordinary  bottles — the  only  kind  of  ice  they  have 
here.  We  are  getting  used  to  all  these  things;  but 
we  are  not  getting  used  to  carrying  our  own  soap. 
We  are  sufficiently  civilized  to  carry  our  own  combs 
and  tooth-brushes;  but  this  thing  of  having  to  ring 
for  soap  every  time  we  wash  is  new  to  us,  and  not 
pleasant  rt  all.     We  think  of  it  just  after  we  get  our 

90 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

heads  and  faces  thoroughly  wet,  or  just  when  we 
think  we  have  been  in  the  bath-tub  long  enough, 
and  then,  of  course,  an  annoying  delay  follows. 
These  Marseillaise  make  Marseillaise  hymns,  and 
Marseilles  vests,  and  Marseilles  soap  for  all  the 
world;  but  they  never  sing  their  hymns,  or  wear 
their  vests,  or  wash  with  their  soap  themselves. 

We  have  learned  to  go  through  the  lingering 
routine  of  the  table  d'hote  with  patience,  with 
serenity,  with  satisfaction.  We  take  soup;  then  wait 
a  few  minutes  for  the  fish;  a  few  minutes  more  and 
the  plates  are  changed,  and  the  roast  beef  comes; 
another  change  and  we  take  peas;  change  again  and 
take  lentils;  change  and  take  snail  patties  (I  prefer 
grasshoppers) ;  change  and  take  roast  chicken  and 
salad ;  then  strawberry  pie  and  ice-cream ;  then  green 
figs,  pears,  oranges,  green  almonds,  etc.,  finally 
coffee.  Wine  with  every  course,  of  course,  being  in 
France.  With  such  a  cargo  on  board,  digestion 
is  a  slow  process,  and  we  must  sit  long  in  the  cool 
chambers  and  smoke — and  read  French  newspapers, 
which  have  a  strange  fashion  of  telling  a  perfectly 
straight  story  till  you  get  to  the  "nub"  of  it,  and 
then  a  word  drops  in  that  no  man  can  translate, 
and  that  story  is  ruined.  An  embankment  fell  on 
some  Frenchmen  yesterday,  and  the  papers  are  full 
of  it  to-day — but  whether  those  sufferers  were  killed, 
or  crippled,  or  bruised,  or  only  scared,  is  more  than  I 
can  possibly  make  out,  and  yet  I  would  just  give 
anything  to  know. 

We  were  troubled  a  little  at  dinner  to-day,  by  the 
conduct  of  an  American,  who  talked  very  loudly 

91 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  coarsely,  and  laughed  boisterously  where  all 
others  were  so  quiet  and  well  behaved.  He  ordered 
wine  with  a  royal  flourish,  and  said:  "I  never  dine 
without  wine,  sir"  (which  was  a  pitiful  falsehood), 
and  looked  around  upon  the  company  to  bask  in 
the  admiration  he  expected  to  find  in  their  faces. 
All  these  airs  in  a  land  where  they  would  as  soon 
expect  to  leave  the  soup  out  of  the  bill  of  fare  as 
the  wine! — in  a  land  where  wine  is  nearly  as  com- 
mon among  all  ranks  as  water!  This  fellow  said: 
"I  am  a  free-born  sovereign,  sir,  an  American,  sir, 
and  I  want  everybody  to  know  it!"  He  did  not 
mention  that  he  was  a  lineal  descendant  of  Balaam's 
ass;  but  everybody  knew  that  without  his  telling  it. 

We  have  driven  in  the  Prado — that  superb  avenue 
bordered  with  patrician  mansions  and  noble  shade 
trees — and  have  visited  the  Chateau  Borely  and  its 
curious  museum.  They  showed  us  a  miniature 
cemetery  there — a  copy  of  the  first  graveyard  that 
was  ever  in  Marseilles,  no  doubt.  The  delicate  little 
skeletons  were  lying  in  broken  vaults,  and  had  their 
household  gods  and  kitchen  utensils  with  them. 
The  original  of  this  cemetery  was  dug  up  in  the 
principal  street  of  the  city  a  few  years  ago.  It  had 
remained  there,  only  twelve  feet  under  ground,  for 
a  matter  of  twenty-five  hundred  years,  or  there- 
abouts. Romulus  was  here  before  he  built  Rome, 
and  thought  something  of  founding  a  city  on  this 
spot,  but  gave  up  the  idea.  He  may  have  been 
personally  acquainted  with  some  of  these  Phoenicians 
whose  skeletons  we  have  been  examining. 

In  the  great  Zoological  Gardens  we  found  speci- 

92 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

mens  of  all  the  animals  the  world  produces,  I  think, 
including  a  dromedary,  a  monkey  ornamented  with 
tufts  of  brilliant  blue  and  carmine  hair — a  very 
gorgeous  monkey  he  was — a  hippopotamus  from 
the  Nile,  and  a  sort  of  tall,  long-legged  bird  with  a 
beak  like  a  powder-horn,  and  close-fitting  wings  like 
the  tails  of  a  dress-coat.  This  fellow  stood  up  with 
his  eyes  shut  and  his  shoulders  stooped  forward  a 
little,  and  looked  as  if  he  had  his  hands  under  his 
coat-tails.  Such  tranquil  stupidity,  such  supernat- 
ural gravity,  such  self -righteousness,  and  such  in- 
effable self-complacency  as  were  in  the  countenance 
and  attitude  of  that  gray -bodied,  dark- winged,  bald- 
headed,  and  preposterously  uncomely  bird!  He 
was  so  ungainly,  so  pimply  about  the  head,  so  scaly 
about  the  legs;  yet  so  serene,  so  unspeakably  satis- 
fied! He  was  the  most  comical-looking  creature 
that  can  be  imagined.  It  was  good  to  hear  Dan  and 
the  doctor  laugh — such  natural  and  such  enjoyable 
laughter  had  not  been  heard  among  our  excursionists 
since  our  ship  sailed  away  from  America.  This  bird 
was  a  godsend  to  us,  and  I  should  be  an  ingrate  if 
I  forgot  to  make  honorable  mention  of  him  in  these 
pages.  Ours  was  a  pleasure  excursion;  therefore 
we  stayed  with  that  bird  an  hour,  and  made  the 
most  of  him.  We  stirred  him  up  occasionally,  but 
he  only  unclosed  an  eye  and  slowly  closed  it  again, 
abating  no  jot  of  his  stately  piety  of  demeanor  or 
his  tremendous  seriousness.  He  only  seemed  to 
say,  "Defile  not  Heaven's  anointed  with  unsanctified 
hands."  We  did  not  know  his  name,  and  so  we 
called  him  "The  Pilgrim."     Dan  said: 

93 


MARK    TWAIN 

"All  he  wants  now  is  a  Plymouth  Collection." 
The  boon  companion  of  the  colossal  elephant  was 
a  common  cat !  This  cat  had  a  fashion  of  climbing 
up  the  elephant's  hind  legs,  and  roosting  on  his 
back.  She  would  sit  up  there,  with  her  paws  curved 
under  her  breast,  and  sleep  in  the  sun  half  the  after- 
noon. It  used  to  annoy  the  elephant  at  first,  and 
he  would  reach  up  and  take  her  down,  but  she 
would  go  aft  and  climb  up  again.  She  persisted 
until  she  finally  conquered  the  elephant's  prejudices, 
and  now  they  are  inseparable  friends.  The  cat 
plays  about  her  comrade's  fore  feet  or  his  trunk 
often,  until  dogs  approach,  and  then  she  goes  aloft 
out  of  danger.  The  elephant  has  annihilated  several 
dogs  lately,  that  pressed  his  companion  too  closely. 
We  hired  a  sailboat  and  a  guide  and  made  an  ex- 
cursion to  one  of  the  small  islands  in  the  harbor  to 
visit  the  Castle  d'If.  This  ancient  fortress  has  a 
melancholy  history.  It  has  been  used  as  a  prison 
for  political  offenders  for  two  or  three  hundred 
years,  and  its  dungeon  walls  are  scarred  with  the 
rudely  carved  names  of  many  and  many  a  captive 
who  fretted  his  life  away  here,  and  left  no  record  of 
himself  but  these  sad  epitaphs  wrought  with  his  own 
hands.  How  thick  the  names  were!  And  their 
long-departed  owners  seemed  to  throng  the  gloomy 
cells  and  corridors  with  their  phantom  shapes.  We 
loitered  through  dungeon  after  dungeon,  away  down 
into  the  living  rock  below  the  level  of  the  sea,  it 
seemed.  Names  everywhere! — some  plebeian,  some 
noble,  some  even  princely.  Plebeian,  prince,  and 
noble  had  one  solicitude  in  common  —  they  would 

94 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

not  be  forgotten!  They  could  suffer  solitude,  inac- 
tivity, and  the  horrors  of  a  silence  that  no  sound 
ever  disturbed;  but  they  could  not  bear  the  thought 
of  being  utterly  forgotten  by  the  world.  Hence  the 
carved  names.  In  one  cell,  where  a  little  light 
penetrated,  a  man  had  lived  twenty-seven  years 
without  seeing  the  face  of  a  human  being — lived  in 
filth  and  wretchedness,  with  no  companionship  but 
his  own  thoughts,  and  they  were  sorrowful  enough, 
and  hopeless  enough,  no  doubt.  Whatever  his 
jailers  considered  that  he  needed  was  conveyed  to 
his  cell  by  night,  through  a  wicket.  This  man 
carved  the  walls  of  his  prison-house  from  floor  to 
roof  with  all  manner  of  figures  of  men  and  animals, 
grouped  in  intricate  designs.  He  had  toiled  there 
year  after  year,  at  his  self-appointed  task,  while  in- 
fants grew  to  boyhood — to  vigorous  youth — idled 
through  school  and  college — acquired  a  profession — 
claimed  man's  mature  estate — married  and  looked 
back  to  infancy  as  a  thing  of  some  vague,  ancient 
time,  almost.  But  who  shall  tell  how  many  ages  it 
seemed  to  this  prisoner?  With  the  one,  time  flew 
sometimes;  with  the  other,  never — it  crawled  always. 
To  the  one,  nights  spent  in  dancing  had  seemed  made 
of  minutes  instead  of  hours;  to  the  other,  those  self- 
same nights  had  been  like  all  other  nights  of  dun- 
geon life,  and  seemed  made  of  slow,  dragging  weeks, 
instead  of  hours  and  minutes. 

One  prisoner  of  fifteen  years  had  scratched  verses 
upon  his  walls,  and  brief  prose  sentences — brief,  but 
full  of  pathos.  These  spoke  not  of  himself  and  his 
hard  estate;  but  only  of  the  shrine  where  his  spirit 

95 


MARK    TWAIN 

fled  the  prison  to  worship — of  home  and  the  idols 
that  were  templed  there.    He  never  lived  to  see  them. 

The  walls  of  these  dungeons  are  as  thick  as  some 
bed-chambers  at  home  are  wide — fifteen  feet.  We 
saw  the  damp,  dismal  cells  in  which  two  of  Dumas' s 
heroes  passed  their  confinement — heroes  of  Monte 
Cristo.  It  was  here  that  the  brave  Abbe  wrote  a 
book  with  his  own  blood;  with  a  pen  made  of  a 
piece  of  iron  hoop,  and  by  the  light  of  a  lamp  made 
out  of  shreds  of  cloth  soaked  in  grease  obtained 
from  his  food;  and  then  dug  through  the  thick  wall 
with  some  trifling  instrument  which  he  wrought  him- 
self out  of  a  stray  piece  of  iron  or  table  cutlery,  and 
freed  Dantes  from  his  chains.  It  was  a  pity  that 
so  many  weeks  of  dreary  labor  should  have  come  to 
naught  at  last. 

They  showed  us  the  noisome  cell  where  the  cele- 
brated "Iron  Mask" — that  ill-starred  brother  of  a 
hard-hearted  king  of  France — was  confined  for  a 
season,  before  he  was  sent  to  hide  the  strange  mys- 
tery of  his  life  from  the  curious  in  the  dungeons  of 
St.  Marguerite.  The  place  had  a  far  greater  interest 
for  us  than  it  could  have  had  if  we  had  known  be- 
yond all  question  who  the  Iron  Mask  was,  and  what 
his  history  had  been,  and  why  this  most  unusual 
punishment  had  been  meted  out  to  him.  Mystery ! 
That  was  the  charm.  That  speechless  tongue,  those 
prisoned  features,  that  heart  so  freighted  with  un- 
spoken troubles,  and  that  breast  so  oppressed  with 
its  piteous  secret,  had  been  here.  These  dank  walls 
had  known  the  man  whose  dolorous  story  is  a  sealed 
book  forever!     There  was  fascination  in  the  spot. 

96 


CHAPTER  XII 

WE  have  come  five  hundred  miles  by  rail  through 
the  heart  of  France.  What  a  bewitching  land 
it  is !  What  a  garden !  Surely  the  leagues  of  bright 
green  lawns  are  swept  and  brushed  and  watered 
every  day  and  their  grasses  trimmed  by  the  barber. 
Surely  the  hedges  are  shaped  and  measured  and 
their  symmetry  preserved  by  the  most  architectural 
of  gardeners.  Surely  the  long,  straight  rows  of 
stately  poplars  that  divide  the  beautiful  landscape 
like  the  squares  of  a  checker-board  are  set  with  line 
and  plummet,  and  their  uniform  height  determined 
with  a  spirit  level.  Surely  the  straight,  smooth, 
pure  white  turnpikes  are  jack-planed  and  sand- 
papered every  day.  How  else  are  these-  marvels  of 
symmetry,  cleanliness,  and  order  attained?  It  is 
wonderful.  There  are  no  unsightly  stone  walls,  and 
never  a  fence  of  any  kind.  There  is  no  dirt,  no 
decay,  no  rubbish  anywhere — nothing  that  even 
hints  at  untidiness — nothing  that  ever  suggests 
neglect.  All  is  orderly  and  beautiful — everything 
is  charming  to  the  eye. 

We  had  such  glimpses  of  the  Rhone  gliding  along 
between  its  grassy  banks;  of  cozy  cottages  buried 
in  flowers  and  shrubbery;  of  quaint  old  red-tiled 
villages  with   mossy  medieval   cathedrals   looming 

97 


MARK    TWAIN 

out  of  their  midst;  of  wooded  hills  with  ivy-grown 
towers  and  turrets  of  feudal  castles  projecting  above 
the  foliage;  such  glimpses  of  Paradise,  it  seemed  to 
us,  such  visions  of  fabled  fairyland! 

We  knew,  then,  what  the  poet  meant,  when  he 
sang  of — 

" — thy  corn-fields  green,  and  sunny  vines, 
0  pleasant  land  of  France."' 

And  it  is  a  pleasant  land.  No  word  described  it 
so  felicitously  as  that  one.  They  say  there  is  no 
word  for  "home"  in  the  French  language.  Well, 
considering  that  they  have  the  article  itself  in  such 
an  attractive  aspect,  they  ought  to  manage  to  get 
along  without  the  word.  Let  us  not  waste  too  much 
pity  on  "homeless"  France.  I  have  observed  that 
Frenchmen  abroad  seldom  wholly  give  up  the  idea 
of  going  back  to  France  some  time  or  other.  I  am 
not  surprised  at  it  now. 

We  are  not  infatuated  with  these  French  railway- 
cars,  though.  We  took  first-class  passage,  not  be- 
cause we  wished  to  attract  attention  by  doing  a  thing 
which  is  uncommon  in  Europe,  but  because  we 
could  make  our  journey  quicker  by  so  doing.  It  is 
hard  to  make  railroading  pleasant,  in  any  country. 
It  is  too  tedious.  Stage-coaching  is  infinitely  more 
delightful.  Once  I  crossed  the  plains  and  deserts 
and  mountains  of  the  West,  in  a  stage-coach,  from 
the  Missouri  line  to  California,  and  since  then  all 
my  pleasure  trips  must  be  measured  to  that  rare 
holiday  frolic.  Two  thousand  miles  of  ceaseless  rush 
and  rattle  and  clatter,  by  night  and  by  day,  and 

98 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

never  a  weary  moment,  never  a  lapse  of  interest! 
The  first  seven  hundred  miles  a  level  continent,  its 
grassy  carpet  greener  and  softer  and  smoother  than 
any  sea,  and  figured  with  designs  fitted  to  its  magni- 
tude— the  shadows  of  the  clouds.  Here  were  no 
scenes  but  summer  scenes,  and  no  disposition  in- 
spired  by  them  but  to  lie  at  full  length  on  the  mail- 
sacks,  in  the  grateful  breeze,  and  dreamily  smoke  the 
pipe  of  peace — what  other,  where  all  was  repose  and 
contentment  ?  In  cool  mornings,  before  the  sun  was 
fairly  up,  it  was  worth  a  lifetime  of  city  toiling  and 
moiling,  to  perch  in  the  foretop  with  the  driver  and 
see  the  six  mustangs  scamper  under  the  sharp  snap- 
ping of  a  whip  that  never  touched  them ;  to  scan  the 
blue  distances  of  a  world  that  knew  no  lords  but  us; 
to  cleave  the  wind  with  uncovered  head  and  feel  the 
sluggish  pulses  rousing  to  the  spirit  of  a  speed  that 
pretended  to  the  resistless  rush  of  a  typhoon !  Then 
thirteen  hundred  miles  of  desert  solitudes;  of  limit- 
less panoramas  of  bewildering  perspective;  of  mimic 
cities,  of  pinnacled  cathedrals,  of  massive  fortresses, 
counterfeited  in  the  eternal  rocks  and  splendid  with 
the  crimson  and  gold  of  the  setting  sun;  of  dizzy 
altitudes  among  fog-wreathed  peaks  and  never- 
melting  snows,  where  thunders  and  lightnings  and 
tempests  warred  magnificently  at  our  feet  and  the 
storm-clouds  above  swung  their  shredded  banners 
in  our  very  faces! 

But  I  forgot.  I  am  in  elegant  France,  now,  and 
not  scurrying  through  the  great  South  Pass  and  the 
Wind  River  Mountains,  among  antelopes  and  buffa- 
loes, and  painted  Indians  on  the  war-path.     It  is 

99 


MARK    TWAIN 

not  meet  that  I  should  make  too  disparaging  com- 
parisons between  humdrum  travel  on  a  railway  and 
that  royal  summer  flight  across  a  continent  in  a 
stage-coach.  I  meant,  in  the  beginning,  to  say  that 
railway  journeying  is  tedious  and  tiresome,  and  so  it 
is — though,  at  the  time,  I  was  thinking  particularly 
of  a  dismal  fifty-hour  pilgrimage  between  New  York 
and  St.  Louis.  Of  course  our  trip  through  France 
was  not  really  tedious,  because  all  its  scenes  and 
experiences  were  new  and  strange;  but  as  Dan  says, 
it  had  its  "discrepancies." 

The  cars  are  built  in  compartments  that  hold  eight 
persons  each.  Each  compartment  is  partially  sub- 
divided, and  so  there  are  two  tolerably  distinct 
parties  of  four  in  it.  Four  face  the  other  four. 
The  seats  and  backs  are  thickly  padded  and  cush- 
ioned, and  are  very  comfortable;  you  can  smoke,  if 
you  wish ;  there  are  no  bothersome  peddlers ;  you  are 
saved  the  infliction  of  a  multitude  of  disagreeable 
fellow-passengers.  So  far,  so  well.  But  then  the 
conductor  locks  you  in  when  the  train  starts;  there 
is  no  water  to  drink  in  the  car;  there  is  no  heating 
apparatus  for  night  travel;  if  a  drunken  rowdy 
should  get  in,  you  could  not  remove  a  matter  of 
twenty  seats  from  him,  or  enter  another  car;  but, 
above  all,  if  you  are  worn  out  and  must  sleep,  you 
must  sit  up  and  do  it  in  naps,  with  cramped  legs  and 
in  a  torturing  misery  that  leaves  you  withered  and 
lifeless  the  next  day — for  behold,  they  have  not 
that  culmination  of  all  charity  and  human  kindness, 
a  sleeping-car,  in  all  France.  I  prefer  the  American 
system.    It  has  not  so  many  grievous ' '  discrepancies. ' ' 

ioo 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

In  France,  all  is  clockwork,  all  is  order.  They 
make  no  mistakes.  Every  third  man  wears  a  uni- 
form, and  whether  he  be  a  marshal  of  the  empire  or 
a  brakeman,  he  is  ready  and  perfectly  willing  to 
answer  all  your  questions  with  tireless  politeness, 
ready  to  tell  you  which  car  to  take,  yea,  and  ready 
to  go  and  put  you  into  it  to  make  sure  that  you  shall 
not  go  astray.  You  cannot  pass  into  the  waiting- 
room  of  the  depot  till  you  have  secured  your  ticket, 
and  you  cannot  pass  from  its  only  exit  till  the  train 
is  at  its  threshold  to  receive  you.  Once  on  board, 
the  train  will  not  start  till  your  ticket  has  been  ex- 
amined— till  every  passenger's  ticket  has  been  in- 
spected. This  is  chiefly  for  your  own  good.  If 
by  any  possibility  you  have  managed  to  take  the 
wrong  train,  you  will  be  handed  over  to  a  polite 
official  who  will  take  you  whither  you  belong,  and 
bestow  you  with  many  an  affable  bow.  Your  ticket 
will  be  inspected  every  now  and  then  along  the 
route,  and  when  it  is  time  to  change  cars  you  will 
know  it.  You  are  in  the  hands  of  officials  who 
zealously  study  your  welfare  and  your  interest,  in- 
stead of  turning  their  talents  to  the  invention  of  new 
methods  of  discommoding  and  snubbing  you,  as  is 
very  often  the  main  employment  of  that  exceedingly 
self-satisfied  monarch,  the  railroad  conductor  of 
America. 

But  the  happiest  regulation  in  French  railway 
government,  is— thirty  minutes  to  dinner!  No  five- 
minute  boltings  of  flabby  rolls,  muddy  coffee,  ques- 
tionable eggs,  gutta-percha  beef,  and  pies  whose 
conception  and  execution  are  a  dark  and  bloody 


MARK    TWAIN 

mystery  to  all  save  the  cook  who  created  thfedi! 
No;  we  sat  calmly  down — it  was  in  old  Dijon, 
which  is  so  easy  to  spell  and  so  impossible  to  pro- 
nounce, except  when  you  civilize  it  and  call  it 
Demijohn — and  poured  out  rich  Burgundian  wines 
and  munched  calmly  through  a  long  table  d'hote 
bill  of  fare,  snail  patties,  delicious  fruits  and  all,  then 
paid  the  trifle  it  cost  and  stepped  happily  aboard  the 
train  again,  without  once  cursing  the  railroad  com- 
pany. A  rare  experience,  and  one  to  be  treasured 
forever. 

They  say  they  do  not  have  accidents  on  these 
French  roads,  and  I  think  it  must  be  true.  If  I 
remember  rightly,  we  passed  high  above  wagon- 
roads,  or  through  tunnels  under  them,  but  never 
crossed  them  on  their  own  level.  About  every 
quarter  of  a  mile,  it  seemed  to  me,  a  man  came  out 
and  held  up  a  club  till  the  train  went  by,  to  signify 
that  everything  was  safe  ahead.  Switches  were 
changed  a  mile  in  advance,  by  pulling  a  wire  rope 
that  passed  along  the  ground  by  the  rail,  from  sta- 
tion to  station.  Signals  for  the  day  and  signals  for 
the  night  gave  constant  and  timely  notice  of  the  po- 
sition of  switches. 

No,  they  have  no  railroad  accidents  to  speak  of 
in  France.  But  why?  Because  when  one  occurs, 
somebody  has  to  hang  for  it!1  Not  hang,  maybe, 
but  be  punished  at  least  with  such  vigor  of  emphasis 
as  to  make  negligence  a  thing  to  be  shuddered  at  by 
railroad  officials  for  many  a  day  thereafter.     "No 

*They  go  on  the  principle  that  it  is  better  that  one  innocent  man 
should  suffer  than  five  hundred. 

T02 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

blame  attached  to  the  officers" — that  lying  and 
disaster-breeding  verdict  so  common  to  our  soft- 
hearted juries,  is  seldom  rendered  in  France.  If  the 
trouble  occurred  in  the  conductor's  department,  that 
officer  must  suffer  if  his  subordinate  cannot  be 
proven  guilty;  if  in  the  engineer's  department,  and 
the  case  be  similar,   the  engineer  must  answer. 

The  Old  Travelers — those  delightful  parrots  who 
have  "been  here  before,"  and  know  more  about 
the  country  than  Louis  Napoleon  knows  now  or 
ever  will  know, — tell  us  these  things,  and  we  believe 
them  because  they  are  pleasant  things  to  believe, 
and  because  they  are  plausible  and  savor  of  the  rigid 
subjection  to  law  and  order  which  we  behold  about 
us  everywhere. 

But  we  love  the  Old  Travelers.  We  love  to  hear 
them  prate  and  drivel  and  lie.  We  can  tell  them 
the  moment  we  see  them.  They  always  throw  out 
a  few  feelers:  they  never  cast  themselves  adrift  till 
they  have  sounded  every  individual  and  know  that 
he  has  not  traveled.  Then  they  open  their  throttle- 
valves,  and  how  they  do  brag,  and  sneer,  and  swell, 
and  soar,  and  blaspheme  the  sacred  name  of  Truth! 
Their  central  idea,  their  grand  aim,  is  to  subjugate 
you,  keep  you  down,  make  you  feel  insignificant 
and  humble  in  the  blaze  of  their  cosmopolitan  glory ! 
They  will  not  let  you  know  anything.  They  sneer 
at  your  most  inoffensive  suggestions ;  they  laugh  un- 
feelingly at  your  treasured  dreams  of  foreign  lands; 
they  brand  the  statements  of  your  traveled  aunts 
and  uncles  as  the  stupidest  absurdities;  they  deride 
yonr  most  trusted  authors  and  demolish  the  fair 

105 


MARK    TWAIN 

images  they  have  set  up  for  your  willing  worship  with 
the  pitiless  ferocity  of  the  fanatic  iconoclast!  But 
still  I  love  the  Old  Travelers.  I  love  them  for  their 
witless  platitudes;  for  their  supernatural  ability  to 
bore;  for  their  delightful  asinine  vanity;  for  their 
luxuriant  fertility  of  imagination;  for  their  startling, 
their  brilliant,  their  overwhelming  mendacity! 

By  Lyons  and  the  Sadne  (where  we  saw  the  Lady 
of  Lyons  and  thought  little  of  her  comeliness);  by 
Villa  Franca,  Tonnerre,  venerable  Sens,  Melun,  Fon- 
tainebleau,  and  scores  of  other  beautiful  cities,  we 
swept,  always  noting  the  absence  of  hog- wallows, 
broken  fences,  cow-lots,  unpainted  houses,  and  mud, 
and  always  noting,  as  well,  the  presence  of  cleanliness, 
grace,  taste  in  adorning  and  beautifying,  even  to  the 
disposition  of  a  tree  or  the  turning  of  a  hedge,  the 
marvel  of  roads  in  perfect  repair,  void  of  ruts  and 
guiltless  of  even  an  inequality  of  surface — we  bowled 
along,  hour  after  hour,  that  brilliant  summer  day, 
and  as  nightfall  approached  we  entered  a  wilder- 
ness of  odorous  flowers  and  shrubbery,  sped  through 
it,  and  then,  excited,  delighted,  and  half  persuaded 
that  we  were  only  the  sport  of  a  beautiful  dream,  lo, 
we  stood  in  magnificent  Paris ! 

What  excellent  order  they  kept  about  that  vast 
depot !  There  was  no  frantic  crowding  and  jostling, 
no  shouting  and  swearing,  and  no  swaggering  in- 
trusion of  services  by  rowdy  hackmen.  These  latter 
gentry  stood  outside — stood  quietly  by  their  long 
line  of  vehicles  and  said  never  a  word.  A  kind  of 
hackman-general  seemed  to  have  the  whole  matter 
of  transportation   in  his   hands.      He   politely  re- 

104 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ceived  the  passengers  and  ushered  them  to  the  kind 
of  conveyance  they  wanted,  and  told  the  driver  where 
to  deliver  them.  There  was  no  "talking  back,"  no 
dissatisfaction  about  overcharging,  no  grumbling 
about  anything.  In  a  little  while  we  were  speeding 
through  the  streets  of  Paris,  and  delightfully  recog- 
nizing certain  names  and  places  with  which  books 
had  long  ago  made  us  familiar.  It  was  like  meeting 
an  old  friend  when  we  read  "Rue  de  Rivoli"  on  the 
street  corner;  we  knew  the  genuine  vast  palace  of 
the  Louvre  as  well  as  we  knew  its  picture;  when  we 
passed  by  the  Column  of  July  we  needed  no  one  to 
tell  us  what  it  was,  or  to  remind  us  that  on  its  site 
once  stood  the  grim  Bastile,  that  grave  of  human 
hopes  and  happiness,  that  dismal  prison-house  within 
whose  dungeons  so  many  young  faces  put  on  the 
wrinkles  of  age,  so  many  proud  spirits  grew  humble, 
so  many  brave  hearts  broke. 

We  secured  rooms  at  the  hotel,  or  rather,  we  had 
three  beds  put  into  one  room,  so  that  we  might  be 
together,  and  then  we  went  out  to  a  restaurant,  just 
after  lamp-lighting,  and  ate  a  comfortable,  satis- 
factory, lingering  dinner.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  eat 
where  everything  was  so  tidy,  the  food  so  well 
cooked,  the  waiters  so  polite,  and  the  coming  and 
departing  company  so  mustached,  so  frisky,  so 
affable,  so  fearfully  and  wonderfully  Frenchy!  All 
the  surroundings  were  gay  and  enlivening.  Two 
hundred  people  sat  at  little  tables  on  the  sidewalk, 
sipping  wine  and  coffee;  the  streets  were  thronged 
with  light  vehicles  and  with  joyous  pleasure  -  seek- 
ers; there  was  music  in  the  air,  life  and  action  all 

105 


MARK    TWAIN 

about  us,  and  a  conflagration  of  gaslight  every- 
where ! 

After  dinner  we  felt  like  seeing  such  Parisian 
specialties  as  we  might  see  without  distressing  exer- 
tion, and  so  we  sauntered  through  the  brilliant  streets 
and  looked  at  the  dainty  trifles  in  variety  stores  and 
jewelry  shops.  Occasionally,  merely  for  the  pleasure 
of  being  cruel,  we  put  unoffending  Frenchmen  on  the 
rack  with  questions  framed  in  the  incomprehensible 
jargon  of  their  native  language,  and  while  they 
writhed,  we  impaled  them,  we  peppered  them,  we 
scarified  them,  with  their  own  vile  verbs  and  parti- 
ciples. 

We  noticed  that  in  the  jewelry  stores  they  had 
some  of  the  articles  marked  ''gold,"  and  some  la- 
beled "imitation."  We  wondered  at  this  extrava- 
gance of  honesty,  and  inquired  into  the  matter.  We 
were  informed  that  inasmuch  as  most  people  are  not 
able  to  tell  false  gold  from  the  genuine  article,  the 
government  compels  jewelers  to  have  their  gold  work 
assayed  and  stamped  officially  according  to  its  fine- 
ness, and  their  imitation  work  duly  labeled  with  the 
sign  of  its  falsity.  They  told  us  the  jewelers  would 
not  dare  to  violate  this  law,  and  that  whatever  a 
stranger  bought  in  one  of  their  stores  might  be  de- 
pended upon  as  being  strictly  what  it  was  represented 
to  be.     Verily,  a  wonderful  land  is  France! 

Then  we  hunted  for  a  barber  shop.  From  earliest 
infancy  it  had  been  a  cherished  ambition  of  mine  to 
be  shaved  some  day  in  a  palatiai  barber  shop  of 
Paris.  I  wished  to  recline  at  full  length  in  a  cush- 
ioned invalid-chair,   with  pictures  about  me,   and 

106 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

sumptuous  furniture;  with  frescoed  walls  and  gilded 
arches  above  me,  and  vistas  of  Corinthian  columns 
stretching  far  before  me,  with  perfumes  of  Araby 
to  intoxicate  my  senses,  and  the  slumbrous  drone  of 
distant  noises  to  soothe  me  to  sleep.  At  the  end  of 
an  hour  I  would  wake  up  regretfully  and  find  my 
face  as  smooth  and  as  soft  as  an  infant's.  Depart- 
ing, I  would  lift  my  hands  above  that  barber's  head 
and  say,  "Heaven  bless  you,  my  son!" 

So  we  searched  high  and  low,  for  a  matter  of  two 
hours,  but  never  a  barber  shop  could  we  see.  We 
saw  only  wig-making  establishments,  with  shocks  of 
dead  and  repulsive  hair  bound  upon  the  heads  of 
painted  waxen  brigands  who  stared  out  from  glass 
boxes  upon  the  passer-by,  with  their  stony  eyes, 
and  scared  him  with  the  ghostly  white  of  their  coun- 
tenances. We  shunned  these  signs  for  a  time,  but 
finally  we  concluded  that  the  wig-makers  must  of 
necessity  be  the  barbers  as  well,  since  we  could  find 
no  single  legitimate  representative  of  the  fraternity. 
We  entered  and  asked,  and  found  that  it  was  even  so. 

I  said  I  wanted  to  be  shaved.  The  barber  in- 
quired where  my  room  was.  I  said,  never  mind 
where  my  room  was,  I  wanted  to  be  shaved — there, 
on  the  spot.  The  doctor  said  he  would  be  shaved 
also.  Then  there  was  an  excitement  among  those 
two  barbers!  There  was  a  wild  consultation,  and 
afterward  a  hurrying  to  and  fro  and  a  feverish  gather- 
ing up  of  razors  from  obscure  places  and  a  ransack- 
ing for  soap.  Next  they  took  us  into  a  little  mean, 
shabby  back  room;  they  got  two  ordinary  sitting- 
room  chairs  and  placed  us  in  them,  with  our  coats 

107 


MARK    TWAIN 

on.  My  old,  old  dream  of  bliss  vanished  into  thin 
air! 

I  sat  bolt  upright,  silent,  sad,  and  solemn.  One 
of  the  wig-making  villains  lathered  my  face  for  ten 
terrible  minutes  and  finished  by  plastering  a  mass  of 
suds  into  my  mouth.  I  expelled  the  nasty  stuff  with 
a  strong  English  expletive  and  said,  "Foreigner, 
beware!"  Then  this  outlaw  strapped  his  razor  on 
his  boot,  hovered  over  me  ominously  for  six  fearful 
seconds,  and  then  swooped  down  upon  me  like  the 
genius  of  destruction.  The  first  rake  of  his  razor 
loosened  the  very  hide  from  my  face  and  lifted  me 
out  of  the  chair.  I  stormed  and  raved,  and  the 
other  boys  enjoyed  it.  Their  beards  are  not  strong 
and  thick.  Let  us  draw  the  curtain  over  this  harrow- 
ing scene.  Suffice  it  that  I  submitted,  and  went 
through  with  the  cruel  infliction  of  a  shave  by  a 
French  barber ;  tears  of  exquisite  agony  coursed  down 
my  cheeks,  now  and  then,  but  I  survived.  Then  the 
incipient  assassin  held  a  basin  of  water  under  my 
chin  and  slopped  its  contents  over  my  face,  and  into 
my  bosom,  and  down  the  back  of  my  neck,  with  a 
mean  pretense  of  washing  away  the  soap  and  blood. 
He  dried  my  features  with  a  towel,  and  was  going 
to  comb  my  hair;  but  I  asked  to  be  excused.  I 
said,  with  withering  irony,  that  it  was  sufficient  to 
be  skinned — I  declined  to  be  scalped. 

I  went  away  from  there  with  my  handkerchief 
about  my  face,  and  never,  never,  never  desired  to 
dream  of  palatial  Parisian  barber  shops  any  more. 
The  truth  is,  as  I  believe  I  have  since  found  out, 
that  they  have  no  barber  shops  worthy  of  the  name 

108 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

in  Paris — and  no  barbers,  either,  for  that  matter. 
The  impostor  who  does  duty  as  a  barber  brings  his 
pans  and  napkins  and  implements  of  torture  to  your 
residence  and  deliberately  skins  you  in  your  private 
apartments.  \h,  I  have  suffered,  suffered,  suffered, 
here  in  Paris,  but  never  mind — the  time  is  coming 
when  I  shall  have  a  dark  and  bloody  revenge.  Some 
day  a  Parisian  barber  will  come  to  my  room  to  skin 
me;  and  from  that  day  forth  that  barber  will  never 
be  heard  of  more. 

At  eleven  o'clock  we  alighted  upon  a  sign  which 
manifestly  referred  to  billiards.  Joy!  We  had 
played  billiards  in  the  Azores  with  balls  that  were 
not  round,  and  on  an  ancient  table  that  was  very 
little  smoother  than  a  brick  pavement — one  of  those 
wretched  old  things  with  dead  cushions,  and  with 
patches  in  the  faded  cloth  and  invisible  obstructions 
that  made  the  balls  describe  the  most  astonishing  and 
unsuspected  angles  and  perform  feats  in  the  way 
of  unlooked-for  and  almost  impossible  "scratches," 
that  were  perfectly  bewildering.  We  had  played 
at  Gibraltar  with  balls  the  size  of  a  walnut,  on  a 
table  like  a  public  square — and  in  both  instances 
we  achieved  far  more  aggravation  than  amusement. 
We  expected  to  fare  better  here,  but  we  were  mis- 
taken. The  cushions  were  a  good  deal  higher  than 
the  balls,  and  as  the  balls  had  a  fashion  of  always 
stopping  under  the  cushions,  we  accomplished  very 
little  in  the  way  of  caroms.  The  cushions  were  hard 
and  unelastic,  and  the  cues  were  so  crooked  that  in 
making  a  shot  you  had  to  allow  for  the  curve  or  you 
would  infallibly  put  the  "English"  on  the  wrong 

IOQ 


MARK    TWAIN 

side  of  the  ball.  Dan  was  to  mark  while  the  doctor 
and  I  played.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  neither  of  us 
had  made  a  count,  and  so  Dan  was  tired  of  keeping 
tally  with  nothing  to  tally,  and  we  were  heated  and 
angry  and  disgusted.  We  paid  the  heavy  bill — 
about  six  cents — and  said  we  would  call  around 
some  time  when  we  had  a  week  to  spend,  and  finish 
the  game. 

We  adjourned  to  one  of  those  pretty  cafes  and 
took  supper  and  tested  the  wines  of  the  country,  as 
we  had  been  instructed  to  do,  and  found  them  harm- 
less and  unexciting.  They  might  have  been,  ex- 
citing, however,  if  we  had  chosen  to  drink  a  suffi- 
ciency of  them. 

To  close  our  first  day  in  Paris  cheerfully  and 
pleasantly,  we  now  sought  our  grand  room  in  the 
Grand  Hotel  du  Louvre  and  climbed  into  our  sump- 
tuous bed,  to  read  and  smoke — but  alan! 

It  was  pitiful, 
In  a  whole  city-full, 
Gas  we  had  none. 

No  gas  to  read  by — nothing  but  dismal  candles. 
It  was  a  shame.  We  tried  to  map  out  excursions 
for  the  morrow;  we  puzzled  over  French  "Guides 
to  Paris";  we  talked  disjointedly,  in  a  vain  endeavor 
to  make  head  or  tail  of  the  wild  chaos  of  the  day's 
sights  and  experiences;  we  subsided  to  indolent 
smoking;  we  gaped  and  yawned,  and  stretched — 
then  feebly  wondered  if  we  were  really  and  truly  in 
renowned  Paris,  and  drifted  drowsily  away  into  that 
vast  mysterious  void  which  men  call  slee  >. 

no 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  next  morning  we  were  up  and  dressed  at  ten 
o'clock.  We  went  to  the  commissionaire  of 
the  hotel — I  don't  know  what  a  commissionaire  is, 
but  that  is  the  man  we  went  to — and  told  him  we 
wanted  a  guide.  He  said  the  great  International 
Exposition  had  drawn  such  multitudes  of  English- 
men and  Americans  to  Paris  that  it  would  be  next 
to  impossible  to  find  a  good  guide  unemployed.  He 
said  he  usually  kept  a  dozen  or  two  on  hand,  but  he 
only  had  three  now.  He  called  them.  One  looked 
so  like  a  very  pirate  that  we  let  him  go  at  once. 
The  next  one  spoke  with  a  simpering  precision  of 
pronunciation  that  was  irritating,  and  said : 

"If  ze  zhentlemans  will  to  me  make  ze  grande 
honneur  to  me  rattain  in  hees  serveece,  I  shall  show 
to  him  everysing  zat  is  magnifique  to  look  upon  in 
ze  beautiful  Parree.  I  speaky  ze  Angleesh  pair- 
faitemaw." 

He  would  have  done  well  to  have  stopped  there, 
because  he  had  that  much  by  heart  and  said  it  right 
off  without  making  a  mistake.  But  his  self-com- 
placency seduced  him  into  attempting  a  flight  into 
regions  of  unexplored  English,  and  the  reckless  ex- 
periment was  his  ruin.  Within  ten  seconds  he  was 
so  tangled  up  in  a  maze  of  mutilated  verbs  and  torn 

in 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  bleeding  forms  of  speech  that  no  human  ingenu- 
ity could  ever  have  gotten  him  out  of  it  with  credit. 
It  was  plain  enough  that  he  could  not  "speaky" 
the  English  quite  as  '<pairfaitemaw',  as  he  had  pre- 
tended he  could. 

The  third  man  captured  us.  He  was  plainly 
dressed,  but  he  had  a  noticeable  air  of  neatness 
about  him.  He  wore  a  high  silk  hat  which  was  a 
little  old,  but  had  been  carefully  brushed.  He  wore 
second-hand  kid  gloves,  in  good  repair,  and  carried 
a  small  rattan  cane  with  a  curved  handle — a  female 
leg,  of  ivory.  He  stepped  as  gently  and  as  daintily 
as  a  cat  crossing  a  muddy  street,  and  oh,  he  was 
urbanity;  he  was  quiet,  unobtrusive  self-possession; 
he  was  deference  itself !  He  spoke  softly  and  guard- 
edly; and  when  he  was  about  to  make  a  statement 
on  his  sole  responsibility,  or  offer  a  suggestion, 
he  weighed  it  by  drachms  and  scruples  first,  with 
the  crook  of  his  little  stick  placed  meditatively 
to  his  teeth.  His  opening  speech  was  perfect.  It 
was  perfect  in  construction,  in  phraseology,  in 
grammar,  in  emphasis,  in  pronunciation — every- 
thing. He  spoke  little  and  guardedly,  after  that. 
We  were  charmed.  We  were  more  than  charmed 
— we  were  overjoyed.  We  hired  him  at  once.  We 
never  even  asked  him  his  price.  This  man — our 
lackey,  our  servant,  our  unquestioning  slave  though 
he  was,  was  still  a  gentleman — we  could  see  that — 
while  of  the  other  two  one  was  coarse  and  awkward, 
and  the  other  was  a  born  pirate.  We  asked  our  man 
Friday's  name.  He  drew  from  his  pocketbook  a  snowy 
little  card,  and  passed  it  to  us  with  a  profound  bow : 

112 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

A.    BlLLFINGER, 

Guide  to  Paris,  France,  Germany, 

Spain,  &c,  &c, 

Grande  Hotel  du  Louvre. 

"Billfinger!     Oh,  carry  me  home  to  die!" 

That  was  an  "aside"  from  Dan.  The  atrocious 
name  grated  harshly  on  my  ear,  too.  The  most  of 
us  can  learn  to  forgive,  and  even  to  like,  a  counte- 
nance that  strikes  us  unpleasantly  at  first,  but  few  of 
us,  I  fancy,  become  reconciled  to  a  jarring  name  so 
easily.  I  was  almost  sorry  we  had  hired  this  man, 
his  name  was  so  unbearable.  However,  no  matter. 
We  were  impatient  to  start.  Billfinger  stepped  to 
the  door  to  call  a  carriage,  and  then  the  doctor  said : 

"Well,  the  guide  goes  with  the  barber  shop,  with 
the  billiard  table,  with  the  gasless  room,  and  maybe 
with  many  another  pretty  romance  of  Paris.  I  ex- 
pected to  have  a  guide  named  Henri  de  Mont- 
morency, or  Armand  de  la  Chartreuse,  or  something 
that  would  sound  grand  in  letters  to  the  villagers  at 
home;  but  to  think  of  a  Frenchman  by  the  name  of 
Billfinger!  Oh!  this  is  absurd,  you  know.  This 
will  never  do.  We  can't  say  Billfinger;  it  is  nause- 
ating. Name  him  over  again;  what  had  we  better 
call  him?     Alexis  du  Caulaincourt?" 

"Alphonse  Henri  Gustave  de  Hauteville,"  I  sug- 
gested. 

"Call  him  Ferguson,"  said  Dan. 

That  was  practical,  unromantic  good  sense. 
Without  debate,  we  expunged  Billfinger  as  Billfinger 
and  called  him  Ferguson. 

133 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  carriage — an  open  barouche — was  ready. 
Ferguson  mounted  beside  the  driver,  and  we  whirled 
away  to  breakfast.  As  was  proper,  Mr.  Ferguson 
stood  by  to  transmit  our  orders  and  answer  questions. 
By  and  by,  he  mentioned  casually — the  artful  ad- 
venturer— that  he  would  go  and  get  his  breakfast 
as  soon  as  we  had  finished  ours.  He  knew  we  could 
not  get  along  without  him,  and  that  we  would  not 
want  to  loiter  about  and  wait  for  him.  We  asked 
him  to  sit  down  and  eat  with  us.  He  begged,  with, 
many  a  bow,  to  be  excused.  It  was  not  proper,  he 
said;  he  would  sit  at  another  table.  We  ordered 
him  peremptorily  to  sit  down  with  us. 

Here  endeth  the  first  lesson.     It  was  a  mistake. 

As  long  as  we  had  the  fellow  after  that,  he  was 
always  hungry;  he  was  always  thirsty.  He  came 
early;  he  stayed  late;  he  could  not  pass  a  restaurant; 
he  looked  with  lecherous  eye  upon  every  wine  shop. 
Suggestions  to  stop,  excuses  to  eat  and  to  drink 
were  forever  on  his  lips.  We  tried  all  we  could  to 
fill  him  so  full  that  he  would  have  no  room  to  spare 
for  a  fortnight;  but  it  was  a  failure.  He  did  not 
hold  enough  to  smother  the  cravings  of  his  super- 
human appetite. 

He  had  another  "discrepancy"  about  him.  He 
was  always  wanting  us  to  buy  things.  On  the  shal- 
lowest pretenses,  he  would  inveigle  us  into  shirt 
stores,  boot  stores,  tailor  shops,  glove  shops — any- 
where under  the  broad  sweep  of  the  heavens  that 
there  seemed  a  chance  of  our  buying  anything.  Any 
one  could  have  guessed  that  the  shopkeepers  paid 
him  a  percentage  on  the  sales;  but  in  our  blessed 

114 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

innocence  we  didn't,  until  this  feature  of  his  conduct 
grew  unbearably  prominent.  One  day,  Dan  hap- 
pened to  mention  that  he  thought  of  buying  three  or 
four  silk  dress-patterns  for  presents.  Ferguson's 
hungry  eye  was  upon  him  in  an  instant.  In  the 
course  of  twenty  minutes,  the  carriage  stopped. 

"What's  this?" 

"Zis  is  ze  finest  silk  magazin  in  Paris — ze  most 
celebrate." 

"What  did  you  come  here  for?  We  told  you  to 
take  us  to  the  palace  of  the  Louvre." 

' '  I  suppose  ze  gentleman  say  he  wish  to  buy  some 
silk." 

"You  are  not  required  to  'suppose'  things  for 
the  party,  Ferguson.  We  do  not  wish  to  tax  your 
energies  too  much.  We  will  bear  some  of  the  bur- 
den and  heat  of  the  day  ourselves.  We  will  en- 
deavor to  do  such  'supposing'  as  is  really  necessary 
to  be  done.     Drive  on."     So  spake  the  doctor. 

Within  fifteen  minutes  the  carriage  halted  again, 
and  before  another  silk  store.     The  doctor  said : 

"Ah,  the  palace  of  the  Louvre;  beautiful,  beauti- 
ful edifice!  Does  the  Emperor  Napoleon  live  here 
now,  Ferguson?" 

"Ah,  doctor!  you  do  jest;  zis  is  not  ze  palace; 
we  come  there  directly.  But  since  we  pass  right  by 
zis  store,  where  is  such  beautiful  silk — " 

"Ah!  I  see,  I  see.  I  meant  to  have  told  you 
that  we  did  not  wish  to  purchase  any  silks  to-day; 
but  in  my  absentmindedness  I  forgot  it.  I  also 
meant  to  tell  you  we  wished  to  go  directly  to  the 
Louvre;  but  I  forgot  that  also.     However,  we  will 

115 


MARK    TWAIN 

go  there   now.     Pardon   my   seeming   carelessness, 
Ferguson.     Drive  on." 

Within  the  half -hour,  we  stopped  again — in  front 
of  another  silk  store.  We  were  angry ;  but  the  doctor 
was  always  serene,  always  smooth- voiced.    He  said : 

"At  last!  How  imposing  the  Louvre  is,  and  yet 
how  small!  how  exquisitely  fashioned!  how  charm- 
ingly situated!     Venerable,  venerable  pile — " 

"Pairdon,  doctor,  zis  is  not  ze  Louvre — it  is — " 

"What  is  it?" 

"I  have  ze  idea — it  come  to  me  in  a  moment — 
zat  ze  silk  in  zis  magazin — " 

"Ferguson,  how  heedless  I  am!  I  fully  intended 
to  tell  you  that  we  did  not  wish  to  buy  any  silks  to- 
day, and  I  also  intended  to  tell  you  that  we  yearned 
to  go  .immediately  to  the  palace  of  the  Louvre,  but 
enjoying  the  happiness  of  seeing  you  devour  four 
breakfasts  this  morning  has  so  rilled  me  with  pleasur- 
able emotions  that  I  neglect  the  commonest  interests 
of  the  time.  However,  we  will  proceed  now  to  the 
Louvre,  Ferguson." 

"But,  doctor"  (excitedly),  "it  will  take  not  a 
minute — not  but  one  small  minute!  Ze  gentleman 
need  not  to  buy  if  he  not  wish  to — but  only  look  at 
ze  silk — look  at  ze  beautiful  fabric."  [Then  plead- 
ingly-]    "Sair — just  only  one  leetle  moment!" 

Dan  said,  "Confound  the  idiot!  I  don't  want  to 
see  any  silks  to-day,  and  I  won't  look  at  them. 
Drive  on." 

And  the  doctor:  "We  need  no  silks  now,  Fergu- 
son. Our  hearts  yearn  for  the  Louvre.  I^et  us 
journey  on — let  us  journey  on." 

116 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"But,  doctor!  it  is  only  one  moment — one  leetle 
moment.  And  ze  time  will  be  save — entirely  save! 
Because  zere  is  nothing  to  see,  now — it  is  too  late. 
It  want  ten  minute  to  four  and  ze  Louvre  close  at 
four — only  one  leetle  moment,  doctor!" 

The  treacherous  miscreant !  After  four  breakfasts 
and  a  gallon  of  champagne,  to  serve  us  such  a  scurvy 
trick.  We  got  no  sight  of  the  countless  treasures  of 
art  in  the  Louvre  galleries  that  day,  and  our  only 
poor  little  satisfaction  was  in  the  reflection  that 
Ferguson  sold  not  a  solitary  silk  dress-pattern. 

I  am  writing  this  chapter  partly  for  the  satisfac- 
tion of  abusing  that  accomplished  knave,  Billfinger, 
and  partly  to  show  whosoever  shall  read  this  how 
Americans  fare  at  the  hands  of  the  Paris  guides,  and 
what  sort  of  people  Paris  guides  are.  It  need  not 
be  supposed  that  we  were  a  stupider  or  an  easier 
prey  than  our  countrymen  generally  are,  for  we  were 
not.  The  guides  deceive  and  defraud  every  Ameri- 
can who  goes  to  Paris  for  the  first  time  and  sees 
its  sights  alone  or  in  company  with  others  as  little 
experienced  as  himself.  I  shall  visit  Paris  again 
some  day,  and  then  let  the  guides  beware!  I  shall 
go  in  my  war-paint — I  shall  carry  my  tomahawk 
along. 

I  think  we  have  lost  but  little  time  in  Paris.  We 
have  gone  to  bed  every  night  tired  out.  Of  course, 
we  visited  the  renowned  International  Exposition. 
All  the  world  did  that.  We  went  there  on  our  third 
day  in  Paris — and  we  stayed  there  nearly  two  hours. 
That  was  our  first  and  last  visit.  To  tell  the  truth, 
we  saw  at  a  glance  that  one  would  have  to  spend 

117 


MARK    TWAIN 

weeks — yea,  even  mont'hs — in  that  monstrous  es- 
tablishment, to  get  an  intelligible  idea  of  it.  It  was 
a  wonderful  show,  but  the  moving  masses  of  people 
of  all  nations  we  saw  there  were  a  still  more  won- 
derful show.  I  discovered  that  if  I  were  to  stay  there 
a  month,  I  should  still  find  myself  looking  at  the 
people  instead  of  the  inanimate  objects  on  exhibition. 
I  got  a  little  interested  in  some  curious  old  tapes- 
tries of  the  thirteenth  century,  but  a  party  of  Arabs 
came  by,  and  their  dusky  faces  and  quaint  costumes 
called  my  attention  away  at  once.  I  watched  a  sil- 
ver swan,  which  had  a  living  grace  about  his  move- 
ments, and  a  living  intelligence  in  his  eyes — watched 
him  swimming  about  as  comfortably  and  as  un- 
concernedly as  if  he  had  been  born  in  a  morass  in- 
stead of  a  jeweler's  shop — watched  him  seize  a 
silver  fish  from  under  the  water  and  hold  up  his  head 
and  go  through  all  the  customary  and  elaborate 
motions  of  swallowing  it — but  the  moment  it  dis- 
appeared down  his  throat  some  tattooed  South  Sea 
Islanders  approached  and  I  yielded  to  their  at- 
tractions. Presently  I  found  a  revolving  pistol 
several  hundred  years  old  which  looked  strangely 
like  a  modern  Colt,  but  just  then  I  heard  that  the 
Empress  of  the  French  was  in  another  part  of  the 
building,  and  hastened  away  to  see  what  she  might 
look  like.  We  heard  martial  music — we  saw  an 
unusual  number  of  soldiers  walking  hurriedly  about 
— there  was  a  general  movement  among  the  people. 
We  inquired  what  it  was  all  about,  and  learned  that 
the  Emperor  of  the  French  and  the  Sultan  of  Turkey 
were  about  to  review  twenty-five  thousand  troops  at 

118 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  Arc  de  l'Etoile  We  immediately  departed.  2 
had  a  greater  anxiety  to  see  these  men  than  I  could 
have  had  to  see  twenty  expositions. 

We  drove  away  and  took  up  a  position  in  an  open 
space  opposite  the  American  Minister's  house.  A 
speculator  bridged  a  couple  of  barrels  with  a  board 
and  we  hired  standing-places  on  it.  Presently  there 
was  a  sound  of  distant  music;  in  another  minute  a 
pillar  of  dust  came  moving  slowly  toward  us;  a  mo- 
ment more,  and  then,  with  colors  flying  and  a  grand 
crash  of  military  music,  a  gallant  array  of  cavalry- 
men emerged  from  the  dust  and  came  down  the 
street  on  a  gentle  trot.  After  them  came  a  long 
line  of  artillery;  then  more  cavalry,  in  splendid 
uniforms;  and  then  their  Imperial  Majesties,  Napo- 
leon III.  and  Abdul  Aziz.  The  vast  concourse  of 
people  swung  their  hats  and  shouted — the  windows 
and  housetops  in  the  wide  vicinity  burst  into  a 
snow-storm  of  waving  handkerchiefs,  and  the  wavers 
of  the  same  mingled  their  cheers  with  those  of  the 
masses  below.     It  was  a  stirring  spectacle. 

But  the  two  central  figures  claimed  all  my  atten- 
tion. Was  ever  such  a  contrast  set  up  before  a 
multitude  till  then?  Napoleon,  in  military  uniform 
— a  long-bodied,  short-legged  man,  fiercely  mus- 
tached,  old,  wrinkled,  with  eyes  half  closed,  and 
such  a  deep,  crafty,  scheming  expression  about 
them !  Napoleon,  bowing  ever  so  gently  to  the  loud 
plaudits,  and  watching  everything  and  everybody 
with  his  cat-eyes  from  under  his  depressed  hat- 
brim,  as  if  to  discover  any  sign  that  those  cheers 
were  not  heartfelt  and  cordial. 

119 


MARK    TWAIN 

Abdul  Aziz,  absolute  lord  of  the  Ottoman  Em- 
pire,— clad  in  dark  green  European  clothes,  almost 
without  ornament  or  insignia  of  rank ;  a  red  Turkish 
fez  on  his  head — a  short,  stout,  dark  man,  black- 
bearded,  black-eyed,  stupid,  unprepossessing — a  man 
whose  whole  appearance  somehow  suggested  that 
if  he  only  had  a  cleaver  in  his  hand  and  a  white 
apron  on,  one  would  not  be  at  all  surprised  to  hear 
him  say:  "A  mutton  roast  to-day,  or  will  you  have 
a  nice  porterhouse  steak?" 

Napoleon  III.,  the  representative  of  the  highest 
modern  civilization,  progress,  and  refinement;  Ab- 
dul Aziz,  the  representative  of  a  people  by  nature 
and  training  filthy,  brutish,  ignorant,  unprogressive, 
superstitious — and  a  government  whose  Three  Graces 
are  Tyranny,  Rapacity,  Blood.  Here  in  brilliant 
Paris,  under  this  majestic  Arch  of  Triumph,  the 
First  Century  greets  the  Nineteenth! 

Napoleon  III.,  Emperor  of  France!  Surrounded 
by  shouting  thousands,  by  military  pomp,  by  the 
splendors  of  his  capital  city,  and  companioned  by 
kings  and  princes — this  is  the  man  who  was  sneered 
at,  and  reviled,  and  called  Bastard — yet  who  was 
dreaming  of  a  crown  and  an  empire  all  the  while; 
who  was  driven  into  exile — but  carried  his  dreams 
with  him;  who  associated  with  the  common  herd  in 
America,  and  ran  foot-races  for  a  wager — but  still 
sat  upon  a  throne,  in  fancy;  who  braved  every 
danger  to  go  to  his  dying  mother — and  grieved  that 
she  could  not  be  spared  to  see  him  cast  aside  his 
plebeian  vestments  for  the  purple  of  royalty;  who 
kept  his  faithful  watch  and  walked  his  weary  beat  a 

1 20 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

common  policeman  of  London — but  dreamed  the 
while  of  a  coming  night  when  he  should  tread  the 
long-drawn  corridors  of  the  Tuileries;  who  made 
the  miserable  fiasco  of  Strasbourg;  saw  his  poor, 
shabby  eagle,  forgetful  of  its  lesson,  refuse  to  perch 
upon  his  shoulder;  delivered  his  carefully  prepared, 
sententious  burst  of  eloquence  upon  unsympathetic 
ears;  found  himself  a  prisoner,  the  butt  of  small 
wits,  a  mark  for  the  pitiless  ridicule  of  all  the  world 
— yet  went  on  dreaming  of  coronations  and  splendid 
pageants  as  before;  who  lay  a  forgotten  captive  in 
the  dungeons  of  Ham — and  still  schemed  and 
planned  and  pondered  over  future  glory  and  future 
power;  President  of  France  at  last!  a  coup  d'etat 
and  surrounded  by  applauding  armies,  welcomed  by 
the  thunders  of  cannon,  he  mounts  a  throne  and 
waves  before  an  astounded  world  the  scepter  of  a 
mighty  empire!  Who  talks  of  the  marvels  of  fic- 
tion? Who  speaks  of  the  wonders  of  romance? 
Who  prates  of  the  tame  achievements  of  Aladdin 
and  the  Magi  of  Arabia? 

Abdul  Aziz,  Sultan  of  Turkey,  Lord  of  the 
Ottoman  Empire!  Born  to  a  throne;  weak,  stupid, 
ignorant,  almost,  as  his  meanest  slave;  chief  of  a 
vast  royalty,  yet  the  puppet  of  his  premier  and  the 
obedient  child  of  a  tyrannical  mother;  a  man  who 
sits  upon  a  throne — the  beck  of  whose  finger  moves 
navies  and  armies — who  holds  in  his  hands  the 
power  of  life  and  death  over  millions — yet  who 
sleeps,  sleeps,  eats,  eats,  idles  with  his  eight  hundred 
concubines,  and  when  he  is  surfeited  with  eating  and 
sleeping  and  idling,  and  would  rouse  up  and  take 

121 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  reins  of  government  and  threaten  t&  be  a  Sultan, 
is  charmed  from  his  purpose  by  the  wury  Fuad  Pacha 
with  a  pretty  plan  for  a  new  palace  or  a  new  ship — 
charmed  away  with  a  new  toy,  like  any  other  restless 
child;  a  man  who  sees  his  people  robbed  and  op- 
pressed by  soulless  tax-gatherers,  but  speaks  no 
word  to  save  them;  who  believes  in  gnomes  and 
genii  and  the  wild  fables  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  but 
has  small  regard  for  the  mighty  magicians  of  to-day, 
and  is  nervous  in  the  presence  of  their  mysterious 
railroads  and  steamboats  and  telegraphs ;  who  would 
see  undone  in  Egypt  all  that  great  Mehemet  AH 
achieved,  and  would  prefer  rather  to  forget  than 
emulate  him;  a  man  who  found  his  great  empire  a 
blot  upon  the  earth — a  degraded,  poverty-stricken, 
miserable,  infamous  agglomeration  of  ignorance, 
crime,  and  brutality,  and  will  idle  away  the  allotted 
days  of  his  trivial  life,  and  then  pass  to  the  dust  and 
the  worms  and  leave  it  so! 

Napoleon  has  augmented  the  commercial  pros- 
perity of  France,  in  ten  years,  to  such  a  degree  that 
figures  can  hardly  compute  it.  He  has  rebuilt  Paris, 
and  has  partly  rebuilt  every  city  in  the  state.  He 
condemns  a  whole  street  at  a  time,  assesses  the 
damages,  pays  them,  and  rebuilds  superbly.  Then 
speculators  buy  up  the  ground  and  sell,  but  the 
original  owner  is  given  the  first  choice  by  the  gov- 
ernment at  a  stated  price  before  the  speculator  is 
permitted  to  purchase.  But  above  all  things,  he 
has  taken  the  sole  control  of  the  empire  of  France 
into  his  hands,  and  made  it  a  tolerably  free  land — 
for  people  who  will  not  attempt  to  go  too  far  in 

122 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

meddling  with  government  affairs.  No  country 
offers  greater  security  to  life  and  property  than 
France,  and  one  has  all  the  freedom  he  wants,  but 
no  license — no  license  to  interfere  with  anybody, 
or  make  any  one  uncomfortable. 

As  for  the  Sultan,  one  could  set  a  trap  anywhere 
and  catch  a  dozen  abler  men  in  a  night. 

The  bands  struck  up,  and  the  brilliant  adventurer, 
Napoleon  III.,  the  genius  of  Energy,  Persistence, 
Enterprise;  and  the  feeble  Abdul  Aziz,  the  genius  of 
Ignorance,  Bigotry,  and  Indolence,  prepared  for  the 
Forward — March ! 

We  saw  the  splendid  review,  we  saw  the  white- 
mustached  old  Crimean  soldier,  Canrobert,  Marshal 
of  France,  we  saw — well,  we  saw  everything,  and 
then  we  went  home  satisfied. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WE  went  to  see  the  Cathedral  of  Notre  Dame. 
We  had  heard  of  it  before.  It  surprises  me, 
sometimes,  to  think  how  much  we  do  know,  and  how 
intelligent  we  are.  We  recognized  the  brown  old 
Gothic  pile  in  a  moment;  it  was  like  the  pictures. 
We  stood  at  a  little  distance  and  changed  from  one 
point  of  observation  to  another,  and  gazed  long  at 
its  lofty  square  towers  and  its  rich  front,  clustered 
thick  with  stony,  mutilated  saints  who  had  been 
looking  calmly  down  from  their  perches  for  ages. 
The  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem  stood  under  them  in  the 
old  days  of  chivalry  and  romance,  and  preached  the 
third  Crusade,  more  than  six  hundred  years  ago; 
and  since  that  day  they  have  stood  there  and  looked 
quietly  down  upon  the  most  thrilling  scenes,  the 
grandest  pageants,  the  most  extraordinary  spectacles 
that  have  grieved  or  delighted  Paris.  These  bat- 
tered and  broken-nosed  old  fellows  saw  many  and 
many  a  cavalcade  of  mail-clad  knights  come  march- 
ing home  from  Holy  Land;  they  heard  the  bells 
above  them  toll  the  signal  for  the  St.  Bartholomew's 
Massacre,  and  they  saw  the  slaughter  that  followed; 
later,  they  saw  the  Reign  of  Terror,  the  carnage  of 
the  Revolution,  the  overthrow  of  a  king,  the  corona- 
tion of  two  Napoleons,  the  christening  of  the  young 

124 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

prince  that  lords  it  over  a  regiment  of  servants  in 
the  Tuileries  to-day — and  they  may  possibly  con- 
tinue to  stand  there  until  they  see  the  Napoleon 
dynasty  swept  away  and  the  banners  of  a  great  Re- 
public floating  above  its  ruins.  I  wish  these  old 
parties  could  speak.  They  could  tell  a  tale  worth 
the  listening  to. 

They  say  that  a  pagan  temple  stood  where  Notre 
Dame  now  stands,  in  the  old  Roman  days,  eighteen 
or  twenty  centuries  ago — remains  of  it  are  still  pre- 
served in  Paris;  and  that  a  Christian  church  took 
its  place  about  A.  D.  300;  another  took  the  place 
of  that  in  A.  D.  500;  and  that  the  foundations  of  the 
present  cathedral  were  laid  about  A.  D.  1100.  The 
ground  ought  to  be  measurably  sacred  by  this  time, 
one  would  think.  One  portion  of  this  noble  old 
edifice  is  suggestive  of  the  quaint  fashions  of  ancient 
times.  It  was  built  by  Jean  Sans-Peur,  Duke  of 
Burgundy,  to  set  his  conscience  at  rest — he  had 
assassinated  the  Duke  of  Orleans.  Alas !  those  good 
old  times  are  gone,  when  a  murderer  could  wipe  the 
stain  from  his  name  and  soothe  his  troubles  to  sleep 
simply  by  getting  out  his  bricks  and  mortar  and 
building  an  addition  to  a  church. 

The  portals  of  the  great  western  front  are  bisected 
by  square  pillars.  They  took  the  central  one  away, 
in  1852,  on  the  occasion  of  thanksgivings  for  the 
reinstitution  of  the  Presidential  power — but  precious 
soon  they  had  occasion  to  reconsider  that  motion 
and  put  it  back  again!     And  they  did. 

We  loitered  through  the  grand  aisles  for  an  hour 
or  two,  staring  up  at  the  rich  stained-glass  windows 

125 


MARK    TWAIN 

embellished  with  blue  and  yellow  and  crimson  saints 
and  martyrs,  and  trying  to  admire  the  numberless 
great  pictures  in  the  chapels,  and  then  we  were  ad- 
mitted to  the  sacristy  and  shown  the  magnificent 
robes  which  the  Pope  wore  when  he  crowned  Napo- 
leon I.;  a  wagon-load  of  solid  gold  and  silver  uten- 
sils used  in  the  great  public  processions  and  cere- 
monies of  the  church;  some  nails  of  the  true  cross, 
a  fragment  of  the  cross  itself,  a  part  of  the  crown 
of  thorns.  We  had  already  seen  a  large  piece  of  the 
true  cross  in  a  church  in  the  Azores,  but  no  nails. 
They  showed  us  likewise  the  bloody  robe  which  that 
Archbishop  of  Paris  wore  who  exposed  his  sacred 
person  and  braved  the  wrath  of  the  insurgents  of 
1848,  to  mount  the  barricades  and  hold  aloft  the 
olive  branch  of  peace  in  the  hope  of  stopping  the 
slaughter.  His  noble  effort  cost  him  his  life.  He 
was  shot  dead.  They  showed  us  a  cast  of  his  face, 
taken  after  death,  the  bullet  that  killed  him,  and 
the  two  vertebrae  in  which  it  lodged.  These  people 
have  a  somewhat  singular  taste  in  the  matter  of 
relics.  Ferguson  told  us  that  the  silver  cross  which 
the  good  archbishop  wore  at  his  girdle  was  seized 
and  thrown  into  the  Seine,  where  it  lay  embedded 
in  the  mud  for  fifteen  years,  and  then  an  angel  ap- 
peared to  a  priest  an  told  him  where  to  dive  for  it; 
he  did  dive  for  it  and  got  it,  and  now  it  is  there  on 
exhibition  at  Notre  Dame,  to  be  inspected  by  any- 
body who  feels  an  interest  in  inanimate  objects  of 
miraculous  intervention. 

Next  we  went  to  visit  the  Morgue,  that  horrible 
receptacle  for  the  dead  who  die  mysteriously  and 

126 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

leav«*  the  manner  of  their  taking  off  a  dismal  secret. 
We  stood  before  a  grating  and  looked  through  into 
a  room  which  was  hung  all  about  with  the  clothing 
of  dead  men;  coarse  blouses,  water-soaked;  the  deli- 
cate garments  of  women  and  children ;  patrician  vest- 
ments, flecked  and  stabbed  and  stained  with  red;  a 
hat  that  was  crushed  and  bloody.  On  a  slanting 
stone  lay  a  drowned  man,  naked,  swollen,  purple; 
clasping  the  fragment  of  a  broken  bush  with  a  grip 
which  death  had  so  petrified  that  human  strength 
could  not  unloose  it — mute  witness  of  the  last  de- 
spairing effort  to  save  the  life  that  was  doomed 
beyond  all  help.  A  stream  of  water  trickled  cease- 
lessly over  the  hideous  face.  We  knew  that  the 
body  and  the  clothing  were  there  for  identification 
by  friends,  but  still  we  wondered  if  anybody  could 
love  that  repulsive  object  or  grieve  for  its  loss.  We 
grew  meditative  and  wondered  if,  some  forty  years 
ago,  when  the  mother  of  that  ghastly  thing  was 
dangling  it  upon  her  knee,  and  kissing  it  and  petting 
it  and  displaying  it  with  satisfied  pride  to  the  passers- 
by,  a  prophetic  vision  of  this  dread  ending  ever 
flitted  through  her  brain.  I  half  feared  that  the 
mother,  or  the  wife  or  a  brother  of  the  dead  man 
might  come  while  we  stood  there,  but  nothing  of 
the  kind  occurred.  Men  and  women  came,  and 
some  looked  eagerly  in,  and  pressed  their  faces 
against  the  bars;  others  glanced  carelessly  at  the 
body,  and  turned  away  with  a  disappointed  look — 
people,  I  thought,  who  live  upon  strong  excite- 
ments, and  who  attend  the  exhibitions  of  the  Morgue 
regularly,  just  as  other  people  go  to  see  theatrical 

127 


MARK    TWAIN 

spectacles  every  night.     When  one  of  these  looked 
in  and  passed  on,  I  could  not  help  thinking — 

"Now  this  don't  afford  you  any  satisfaction — a 
party  with  his  head  shot  off  is  what  you  need." 

One  night  we  went  to  the  celebrated  Jardin 
Mabille,  but  only  stayed  a  little  while.  We  wanted 
to  see  some  of  this  kind  of  Paris  life,  however,  and 
therefore  the  next  night  we  went  to  a  similar  place 
of  entertainment  in  a  great  garden  in  the  suburb  of 
Asnieres.  We  went  to  the  railroad  depot,  toward 
evening,  and  Ferguson  got  tickets  for  a  second-class 
carriage.  Such  a  perfect  jam  of  people  I  have  not 
often  seen — but  there  was  no  noise,  no  disorder, 
no  rowdyism.  Some  of  the  women  and  young  girls 
that  entered  the  train  we  knew  to  be  of  the  demi- 
monde, but  others  we  wTere  not  at  all  sure  about. 

The  girls  and  women  in  our  carriage  behaved 
themselves  modestly  and  becomingly  all  the  way 
out,  except  that  they  smoked.  When  we  arrived  at 
the  garden  in  Asnieres,  we  paid  a  franc  or  two  ad- 
mission, and  entered  a  place  which  had  flower-beds 
in  it,  and  grass-plats,  and  long,  curving  rows  of  orna- 
mental shrubbery,  with  here  and  there  a  secluded 
bower  convenient  for  eating  ice-cream  in.  We 
moved  along  the  sinuous  gravel  walks,  with  the  great 
concourse  of  girls  and  young  men,  and  suddenly  a 
domed  and  filigreed  white  temple,  starred  over  and 
over  and  over  again  with  brilliant  gas-jets,  burst 
upon  us  like  a  fallen  sun.  Near  by  was  a  large, 
handsome  house  with  its  ample  front  illuminated  in 
the  same  way,  and  above  its  roof  floated  the  Star- 
Spangled  Banner  of  America. 

128 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"Well!"  I  said.  "How  is  this?"  It  nearly  took 
my  breath  away. 

Ferguson  said  an  American  —  a  New-Yorker  — 
kept  the  place,  and  was  carrying  on  quite  a  stirring 
opposition  to  the  Jardin  Mabille. 

Crowds,  composed  of  both  sexes  and  nearly  all 
ages,  were  frisking  about  the  garden  or  sitting  in  the 
open  air  in  front  of  the  flagstaff  and  the  temple, 
drinking  wine  and  coffee,  or  smoking.  The  dancing 
had  not  begun  yet.  Ferguson  said  there  was  to  be 
an  exhibition.  The  famous  Blondin  was  going  to 
perform  on  a  tight  rope  in  another  part  of  the  garden. 
We  went  thither.  Here  the  light  was  dim,  and  the 
masses  of  people  were  pretty  closely  packed  together. 
And  now  I  made  a  mistake  which  any  donkey  might 
make,  but  a  sensible  man  never.  I  committed  an 
error  which  I  find  myself  repeating  every  day  of  my 
life.     Standing  right  before  a  young  lady,  I  said: 

"Dan,  just  look  at  this  girl,  how  beautiful  she  is!" 

"I  thank  you  more  for  the  evident  sincerity  of 
the  compliment,  sir,  than  for  the  extraordinary 
publicity  you  have  given  to  it!"  This  in  good, 
pure  English. 

We  took  a  walk,  but  my  spirits  were  very,  very 
sadly  dampened.  I  did  not  feel  right  comfortable 
for  some  time  afterward.  Why  will  people  be  so 
stupid  as  to  suppose  themselves  the  only  foreigners 
among  a  crowd  of  ten  thousand  persons? 

But  Blondin  came  out  shortly.  He  appeared  on 
a  stretched  cable,  far  away  above  the  sea  of  tossing 
hats  and  handkerchiefs,  and  in  the  glare  of  the  hun- 
dreds of  rockets  that  whizzed  heavenward  by  him 

129 


MARK    TWAIN 

he  looked  like  a  wee  insect.  He  balanced  his  pole 
and  walked  the  length  of  his  rope — tv/o  or  three  hun- 
dred feet;  he  came  back  and  got  a  man  and  carried 
him  across;  he  returned  to  the  center  and  danced  a 
jig;  next  he  performed  some  gymnastic  and  balanc- 
ing feats  too  perilous  to  afford  a  pleasant  spectacle; 
and  he  finished  by  fastening  to  his  person  a  thou- 
sand Roman  candles,  Catherine  wheels,  serpents  and 
rockets  of  all  manner  of  brilliant  colors,  setting  them 
on  fire  all  at  once  and  walking  and  waltzing  across 
his  rope  again  in  a  blinding  blaze  of  glory  that  lit 
up  the  garden  and  the  people's  faces  like  a  great  con- 
flagration at  midnight. 

The  dance  had  begun,  and  we  adjourned  to  the 
temple.  Within  it  was  a  drinking-saloon ;  and  all 
around  it  was  a  broad  circular  platform  for  the 
dancers.  I  backed  up  against  the  wall  of  the  temple, 
and  waited.  Twenty  sets  formed,  the  music  struck 
up,  and  then — I  placed  my  hands  before  my  face 
for  very  shame.  But  I  looked  through  my  fingers. 
They  were  dancing  the  renowned  "Can-can."  A 
handsome  girl  in  the  set  before  me  tripped  forward 
lightly  to  meet  the  opposite  gentleman — tripped 
back  again,  grasped  her  dresses  vigorously  on  both 
sides  with  her  hands,  raised  them  pretty  high, 
danced  an  extraordinary  jig  that  had  more  activity 
and  exposure  about  it  than  any  jig  I  ever  saw  be- 
fore, and  then,  drawing  her  clothes  still  higher,  she 
advanced  gaily  to  the  center  and  launched  a  vicious 
kick  full  at  her  vis-a-vis  that  must  infallibly  have 
removed  his  nose  if  he  had  been  seven  feet  high.  It 
was  a  mercy  he  was  only  six. 

130 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

That  is  the  Can-can.  The  idea  of  it  is  to  dance  as 
wildly,  as  noisily,  as  furiously  as  you  can;  expose 
yourself  as  much  as  possible  if  you  are  a  woman; 
and  kick  as  high  as  you  can,  no  matter  which  sex 
you  belong  to.  There  is  no  word  of  exaggeration 
in  this.  Any  of  the  staid,  respectable,  aged  people 
who  were  there  that  night  can  testify  to  the  truth  of 
that  statement.  There  were  a  good  many  such 
people  present.  I  suppose  French  morality  is  not 
of  that  strait-laced  description  which  is  shocked  at 
trifles. 

I  moved  aside  and  took  a  general  view  of  the  Can- 
can. Shouts,  laughter,  furious  music,  a  bewildering 
chaos  of  darting  and  intermingling  forms,  stormy 
jerking  and  snatching  of  gay  dresses,  bobbing  heads, 
flying  arms,  lightning  flashes  of  white-stockinged 
calves  and  dainty  slippers  in  the  air,  and  then  a 
grand  final  rush,  riot,  a  terrific  hubbub,  and  a  wild 
stampede!  Heavens!  Nothing  like  it  has  been 
seen  on  earth  since  trembling  Tarn  O'Shanter  saw 
the  devil  and  the  witches  at  their  orgies  that  stormy 
night  in  "Alio way's  auld  haunted  kirk." 

We  visited  the  Louvre,  at  a  time  when  we  had  no 
silk  purchases  in  view,  and  looked  at  its  miles  of 
paintings  by  the  old  masters.  Some  of  them  were 
beautiful,  but  at  the  same  time  they  carried  such 
evidences  about  them  of  the  cringing  spirit  of  those 
great  men  that  we  found  small  pleasure  in  examining 
them.  Their  nauseous  adulation  of  princely  patrons 
was  more  prominent  to  me  and  chained  my  attention 
more  surely  than  the  charms  of  color  and  expression 
which  are  claimed  to  be  in  the  pictures.     Gratitude 

131 


MARK    TWAIN 

for  kindnesses  is  well,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  some 
of  those  artists  carried  it  so  far  that  it  ceased  to  be 
gratitude,  and  became  worship.  If  there  is  a  plau- 
sible excuse  for  the  worship  of  men,  then  by  all 
means  let  us  forgive  Rubens  and  his  brethren. 

But  I  will  drop  the  subject,  lest  I  say  something 
about  the  old  masters  that  might  as  well  be  left 
unsaid. 

Of  course  we  drove  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  that 
limitless  park,  with  its  forests,  its  lakes,  its  cascades, 
and  its  broad  avenues.  There  were  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  vehicles  abroad,  and  the  scene  was  full 
of  life  and  gaiety.  There  were  very  common  hacks, 
with  father  and  mother  and  all  the  children  in  them; 
conspicuous  little  open  carriages  with  celebrated 
ladies  of  questionable  reputation  in  them ;  there  were 
Dukes  and  Duchesses  abroad,  with  gorgeous  foot- 
men perched  behind,  and  equally  gorgeous  outriders 
perched  on  each  of  the  six  horses;  there  were  blue 
and  silver,  and  green  and  gold,  and  pink  and  black, 
and  all  sorts  and  descriptions  of  stunning  and  start- 
ling liveries  out,  and  I  almost  yearned  to  be  a  flunkey 
myself,  for  the  sake  of  the  fine  clothes. 

But  presently  the  Emperor  came  along  and  he 
outshone  them  all.  He  was  preceded  by  a  body- 
guard of  gentlemen  on  horseback  in  showy  uniforms, 
his  carriage -horses  (there  appeared  to  be  somewhere 
in  the  remote  neighborhood  of  a  thousand  of  them) 
were  bestridden  by  gallant -looking  fellows,  also  in 
stylish  uniforms,  and  after  the  carriage  followed 
another  detachment  of  body-guards.  Everybody 
got  out  of  the  way;  everybody  bowed  to  the  Em- 

132 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

peror  and  his  friend  the  Sultan,  and  they  went  by 
on  a  swinging  trot  and  disappeared. 

I  will  not  describe  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  I  can- 
not do  it.  It  is  simply  a  beautiful,  cultivated,  end- 
less, wonderful  wilderness.  It  is  an  enchanting 
place,  It  is  in  Paris,  now,  one  may  say,  but  a 
crumbling  old  cross  in  one  portion  of  it  reminds  one 
that  it  was  not  always  so.  The  cross  marks  the  spot 
where  a  celebrated  troubadour  was  waylaid  and  mur- 
dered in  the  fourteenth  century.  It  was  in  this  park 
that  that  fellow  with  an  unpronounceable  name  made 
the  attempt  upon  the  Russian  Czar's  life  last  spring 
with  a  pistol.  The  bullet  struck  a  tree.  Ferguson 
showed  us  the  place.  Now  in  America  that  interest- 
ing tree  would  be  chopped  down  or  forgotten  within 
the  next  five  years,  but  it  will  be  treasured  here. 
The  guides  will  point  it  out  to  visitors  for  the  next 
eight  hundred  years,  and  when  it  decays  and  falls 
down  they  will  put  up  another  there  and  go  on  with 
the  same  old  story  just  the  same. 


CHAPTER  XV 

ONE  of  our  pleasantest  visits  was  to  Pere  la 
Chaise,  the  national  burying-ground  of  France, 
the  honored  resting-place  of  some  of  her  greatest  and 
best  children,  the  last  home  of  scores  of  illustrious 
men  and  women  who  were  born  to  no  titles,  but 
achieved  fame  by  their  own  energy  and  their  own 
genius.  It  is  a  solemn  city  of  winding  streets,  and 
of  miniature  marble  temples  and  mansions  of  the 
dead  gleaming  white  from  out  a  wilderness  of  foliage 
and  fresh  flowers.  Not  every  city  is  so  well  peopled 
as  this,  or  has  so  ample  an  area  within  its  walls.  Few 
palaces  exist  in  any  city  that  are  so  exquisite  in  de« 
sign,  so  rich  in  art,  so  costly  in  material,  so  graceful, 
so  beautiful. 

We  stood,  in  the  ancient  church  of  St.  Denis, 
where  the  marble  effigies  of  thirty  generations  of 
kings  and  queens  lay  stretched  at  length  upon  the 
tombs,  and  the  sensations  invoked  were  startling  and 
novel;  the  curious  armor,  the  obsolete  costumes, 
the  placid  faces,  the  hands  placed  palm  to  palm  in 
eloquent  supplication — it  was  a  vision  of  gray 
antiquity.  It  seemed  curious  enough  to  be  standing 
face  to  face,  as  it  were,  with  old  Dagobert  I.,  and 
Clovis  and  Charlemagne,  those  vague,  colossal  heroes, 
those  shadows,  those  myths  of  a  thousand  years  ago ! 

i34 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

I  touched  their  dust-covered  faces  with  my  finger, 
but  Dagobert  was  deader  than  the  sixteen  centuries 
that  have  passed  over  him,  Clovis  slept  well  after  his 
labor  for  Christ,  and  old  Charlemagne  went  on 
dreaming  of  his  paladins,  of  bloody  RoncesvaUes. 
and  gave  no  heed  to  me. 

The  great  names  of  Pere  la  Chaise  impress  one, 
too,  but  differently.  There  the  suggestion  brought 
constantly  to  his  mind  is,  that  this  place  is  sacred 
to  a  nobler  royalty — the  royalty  of  heart  and  brain. 
Every  faculty  of  mind,  every  noble  trait  of  human 
nature,  every  high  occupation  which  men  engage  in, 
seems  represented  by  a  famous  name.  The  effect  is 
a  curious  medley.  Davoust  and  Massena,  who 
wrought  in  many  a  battle-tragedy,  are  here,  and  so 
also  is  Rachel,  of  equal  renown  in  mimic  tragedy  on 
the  stage.  The  Abbe  Sicard  sleeps  here — the  first 
great  teacher  of  the  deaf  and  dumb — a  man  whose 
heart  went  out  to  every  unfortunate,  and  whose  life 
was  given  to  kindly  offices  in  their  service;  and  not 
far  off,  in  repose  and  peace  at  last,  lies  Marshal 
Ney,  whose  stormy  spirit  knew  no  music  like  the 
bugle-call  to  arms.  The  man  who  originated  public 
gas-lighting,  and  that  other  benefactor  who  intro- 
duced the  cultivation  of  the  potato  and  thus  blessed 
millions  of  his  starving  countrymen,  lie  with  the 
Prince  of  Masserano,  and  with  exiled  queens  and 
princes  of  Further  India.  Gay-Lussac,  the  chemist; 
Laplace,  the  astronomer;  Larrey,  the  surgeon;  de 
Seze,  the  advocate,  are  here,  and  with  them  are 
Talma,  Bellini,  Rubini;  de  Balzac,  Beaumarchais, 
Beranger;   Moliere  and   Lafontaine,   and  scores  of 

135 


MARK    TWAIN 

other  men  whose  names  and  whose  worthy  labors- 
are  as  familiar  in  the  remote  by-places  of  civilization 
as  are  the  historic  deeds  of  the  kings  and  princes 
that  sleep  in  the  marble  vaults  of  St.  Denis. 

But  among  the  thousands  and  thousands  of  tombs 
in  Pere  la  Chaise,  there  is  one  that  no  man,  no 
woman,  no  youth  of  either  sex,  ever  passes  by  with- 
out stopping  to  examine.  Every  visitor  has  a  sort 
of  indistinct  idea  of  the  history  of  its  dead,  and 
comprehends  that  homage  is  due  there,  but  not  one 
in  twenty  thousand  clearly  remembers  the  story  of 
that  tomb  and  its  romantic  occupants.  This  is  the 
grave  of  Abelard  and  Heloise — a  grave  which  has 
been  more  revered,  more  widely  known,  more  writ- 
ten and  sung  about  and  wept  over,  for  seven  hun- 
dred years,  than  any  other  in  Christendom,  save 
only  that  of  the  Saviour.  All  visitors  linger  pensively 
about  it;  all  young  people  capture  and  carry  away 
keepsakes  and  mementoes  of  it;  all  Parisian  youths 
and  maidens  who  are  disappointed  in  love  come 
there  to  bail  out  when  they  are  full  of  tears;  yea, 
many  stricken  lovers  make  pilgrimages  to  this 
shrine  from  distant  provinces  to  weep  and  wail  and 
"grit"  their  teeth  over  their  heavy  sorrows,  and  to 
purchase  the  sympathies  of  the  chastened  spirits  of 
that  tomb  with  offerings  of  immortelles  and  budding 
flowers. 

Go  when  you  will,  you  find  somebody  snuffling 
over  that  tomb.  Go  when  you  will,  you  find  it 
furnished  with  those  bouquets  and  immortelles.  Go 
when  you  will,  you  find  a  gravel-train  from  Marseilles 
arriving  to  supply  the  deficiencies  caused  by  me- 

126 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

mento-cabbaging    vandals    whose    affections    have 
miscarried. 

Yet  who  really  knows  the  story  of  Abelard  and 
Heloise?  Precious  few  people.  The  names  are 
perfectly  familiar  to  everybody,  and  that  is  about 
all.  With  infinite  pains  I  have  acquired  a  knowledge 
of  that  history,  and  I  propose  to  narrate  it  here, 
partly  for  the  honest  information  of  the  public  and 
partly  to  show  that  public  that  they  have  been  wast- 
ing a  good  deal  of  marketable  sentiment  very  un- 
necessarily. 

STORY    OF    ABELARD    AND    HELOISE 

Heloise  was  born  seven  hundred  and  sixty-six 
years  ago.  She  may  have  had  parents.  There  is 
no  telling.  She  lived  with  her  uncle  Fulbert,  a 
canon  of  the  cathedral  of  Paris.  I  do  not  know 
what  a  canon  of  a  cathedral  is,  but  that  is  what  he 
was.  He  was  nothing  more  than  a  sort  of  a  moun- 
tain howitzer,  likely,  because  they  had  no  heavy 
artillery  in  those  days.  Suffice  it,  then,  that  Heloise 
lived  with  her  uncle  the  howitzer,  and  was  happy. 
She  spent  the  most  of  her  childhood  in  the  convent  of 
Argenteuil — never  heard  of  Argent euil  before,  but 
suppose  there  was  really  such  a  place.  She  then 
returned  to  her  uncle,  the  old  gun,  or  son  of  a  gun, 
as  the  case  may  be,  and  he  taught  her  to  write  and 
speak  Latin,  which  was  the  language  of  literature 
and  polite  society  at  that  period. 

Just  at  this  time,  Pierre  Abelard,  who  had  already 
made  himself  widely  famous  as  a  rhetorician,  came 
to  found  a  school  of  rhetoric  in  Paris.     The  origi- 

137 


MARK    TWAIN 

nality  of  his  principles,  his  eloquence,  and  his  great 
physical  strength  and  beauty  created  a  profound 
sensation.  He  saw  Heloise,  and  was  captivated  by 
her  blooming  youth,  her  beauty,  and  her  charming 
disposition.  He  wrote  to  her;  she  answered.  He 
wrote  again,  she  answered  again.  He  was  now  in  love. 
He  longed  to  know  her — to  speak  to  her  face  to  face. 

His  school  was  near  Fulbert's  house.  He  asked 
Fulbert  to  allow  him  to  call.  The  good  old  swivel 
saw  here  a  rare  opportunity;  his  niece,  whom  he  so 
much  loved,  would  absorb  knowledge  from  this 
man,  and  it  would  not  cost  him  a  cent.  Such  was 
Fulbert — penurious . 

Fulbert's  first  name  is  not  mentioned  by  any 
author,  which  is  unfortunate.  However,  George  W. 
Fulbert  will  answer  for  him  as  well  as  any  other. 
We  will  let  him  go  at  that.  He  asked  Abelard  to 
teach  her. 

Abelard  was  glad  enough  of  the  opportunity.  He 
came  often  and  stayed  long.  A  letter  of  his  shows 
in  its  very  first  sentence  that  he  came  under  that 
friendly  roof,  like  a  cold-hearted  villain  as  he  was, 
with  the  deliberate  intention  of  debauching  a  con- 
fiding, innocent  girl.     This  is  the  letter: 

I  cannot  cease  to  be  astonished  at  the  simplicity  of  Fulbert; 
I  was  as  much  surprised  as  if  he  had  placed  a  lamb  in  the  power 
of  a  hungry  wolf.  Heloise  and  I,  under  the  pretext  of  study,  gave 
ourselves  up  wholly  to  love,  and  the  solitude  that  love  seeks 
our  studies  procured  for  us.  Books  were  open  before  us,  but 
we  spoke  oftener  of  love  than  philosophy,  and  kisses  came  more 
readily  from  our  lips  than  words. 

And  so,  exulting  over  an  honorable  confidence 
which   to   his   degraded   instinct   was   a   ludicrous 

i*8 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"simplicity,"  this  unmanly  Abelard  seduced  the 
niece  of  the  man  whose  guest  he  was.  Paris  found 
it  out.  Fulbert  was  told  of  it — told  often — but 
refused  to  believe  it.  He  could  not  comprehend 
how  a  man  could  be  so  depraved  as  to  use  the  sacred 
protection  and  security  of  hospitality  as  a  means  for 
the  commission  of  such  a  crime  as  that.  But  when 
he  heard  the  rowdies  in  the  streets  singing  the  love 
songs  of  Abelard  to  Heloise,  the  case  was  too  plain 
— love  songs  come  not  properly  within  the  teachings 
of  rhetoric  and  philosophy. 

He  drove  Abelard  from  his  house.  Abelard  re- 
turned secretly  and  carried  Heloise  "way  to  Palais, 
in  Brittany,  his  native  country.  Here,  shortly  after- 
wara,  she  bore  a  son,  who,  from  his  rare  beauty, 
was  surnamed  Astrolabe — William  G.  The  girl's 
flight  enraged  Fulbert,  and  he  longed  for  vengeance, 
but  feared  to  strike  lest  retaliation  visit  Heloise — 
for  he  still  loved  her  tenderly.  At  length  Abelard 
offered  to  marry  Heloise — but  on  a  shameful  con- 
dition: that  the  marriage  should  be  kept  seciet  from 
the  world,  to  the  end  that  (while  her  good  name 
remained  a  wreck,  as  before)  his  priestly  reputation 
might  be  kept  untarnished  It  was  like  that  mis- 
creant. Fulbert  saw  his  opportunity  and  consented. 
He  would  see  the  parties  married,  and  then  violate 
the  confidence  of  the  man  who  had  taught  him  that 
trick;  he  would  divulge  the  secret  and  so  remove 
somewhat  of  the  obloquy  that  attached  to  his  niece's 
fame.  But  the  niece  suspected  his  scheme.  She 
refused  the  marriage  at  first ;  she  said  Fulbert  would 
betray  the  secret  to  save  her,  and  besides,  she  did 

i39 


MARK    TWAIN 

not  wish  to  drag  down  a  lover  who  was  so  gifted,  so 
honored  by  the  world,  and  who  had  such  a  splendid 
career  before  him.  It  was  noble,  self-sacrificing 
love,  and  characteristic  of  the  pure-souled  Heloise, 
but  it  was  not  good  sense. 

But  she  was  overruled,  and  the  private  marriage 
took  place.  Now  for  Fulbert!  The  heart  so 
wounded  should  be  healed  at  last;  the  proud  spirit 
so  tortured  should  find  rest  again;  the  humbled 
head  should  be  lifted  up  once  more.  He  proclaimed 
the  marriage  in  the  high  places  of  the  city,  and  re- 
joiced that  dishonor  had  departed  from  his  house. 
But  lo!  Abelard  denied  the  marriage!  Heloise  de- 
nied it.  The  people,  knowing  the  former  circum- 
stances, might  have  believed  Fulbert,  had  only 
Abelard  denied  it,  but  when  the  person  chiefly  inter- 
ested— the  girl  herself — denied  it,  they  laughed  de- 
spairing Fulbert  to  scorn. 

The  poor  canon  of  the  cathedral  of  Paris  was 
spiked  again.  The  last  hope  of  repairing  the  wrong 
that  had  been  done  his  house  was  gone.  What 
next?  Human  nature  suggested  revenge.  He  com- 
passed it.     The  historian  says: 

Ruffians,  hired  by  Fulbert,  fell  upon  Abelard  by  night,  and 
inflicted  upon  him  a  terrible  and  nameless  mutilation. 

I  am  seeking  the  last  resting-place  of  those  "ruff- 
ians." When  I  find  it  I  shall  shed  some  tears  on  it, 
and  stack  up  some  bouquets  and  immortelles,  and 
cart  away  from  it  some  gravel  whereby  to  remember 
that  howsoever  blotted  by  crime  their  lives  may  have 
been,  these  ruffians  did  one  just  deed,  at  any  rate, 

14a 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

albeit  it  was  not  warranted  by  the  strict  letter  of  the 
law. 

Heloise  entered  a  convent  and  gave  good-by  to 
the  world  and  its  pleasures  for  all  time.  For  twelve 
years  she  never  heard  of  Abelard — never  even  heard 
his  name  mentioned.  She  had  become  prioress  of 
Argenteuil,  and  led  a  life  of  complete  seclusion. 
She  happened  one  day  to  see  a  letter  written  by  him, 
in  which  he  narrated  his  own  history.  She  cried 
over  it,  and  wrote  him.  He  answered,  addressing 
her  as  his  "sister  in  Christ."  They  continued  to 
correspond,  she  in  the  un weighed  language  of  un- 
wavering affection,  he  in  the  chilly  phraseology  of 
the  polished  rhetorician.  She  poured  out  her  heart 
in  passionate,  disjointed  sentences;  he  replied  with 
finished  essays,  divided  deliberately  into  heads  and 
subheads,  premises  and  argument.  She  showered 
upon  him  the  tenderest  epithets  that  love  could 
devise,  he  addressed  her  from  the  North  Pole  of  his 
frozen  heart  as  the  "Spouse  of  Christ!"  The 
abandoned  villain! 

On  account  of  her  too  easy  government  of  her 
nuns,  some  disreputable  irregularities  were  discov- 
ered among  them,  and  the  Abbot  of  St.  Denis  broke 
up  her  establishment.  Abelard  was  the  official  head 
of  the  monastery  of  St.  Gildas  de  Ruys,  at  that 
time,  and  when  he  heard  of  her  homeless  condition 
a  sentiment  of  pity  was  aroused  in  his  breast  (it  is  a 
wonder  the  unfamiliar  emotion  did  not  blow  his 
head  off),  and  he  placed  her  and  her  troop  in  the 
little  oratory  of  the  Paraclete,  a  religious  establish- 
ment which  he  had  founded     She  had  many  priva- 

141 


MARK    TWAIN 

tions  and  stiff erings  to  undergo  at  first,  but  her  worth 
and  her  gentle  disposition  won  influential  friends  for 
her,  and  she  built  up  a  wealthy  and  flourishing 
nunnery.  She  became  a  great  favorite  with  the 
heads  of  the  church,  and  also  the  people,  though 
she  seldom  appeared  in  public.  She  rapidly  ad- 
vanced in  esteem,  in  good  report  and  in  usefulness, 
and  Abelard  as  rapidly  lost  ground.  The  Pope  so 
honored  her  that  he  made  her  the  head  of  her  order. 
Abelard,  a  man  of  splendid  talents,  and  ranking  as 
the  first  debater  of  his  time,  became  timid,  irreso- 
lute, and  distrustful  of  his  powers.  He  only  needed 
a  great  misfortune  to  topple  him  from  the  high  posi- 
tion he  held  in  the  world  of  intellectual  excellence, 
and  it  came.  Urged  by  kings  and  princes  to  meet 
the  subtle  St.  Bernard  in  debate  and  crush  him,  he 
stood  up  in  the  presence  of  a  royal  and  illustrious 
assemblage,  and  when  his  antagonist  had  finished  he 
looked  about  him,  and  stammered  a  commencement ; 
but  his  courage  failed  him,  the  cunning  of  his  tongue 
was  gone;  with  his  speech  unspoken,  he  trembled 
and  sat  down,  a  disgraced  and  vanquished  champion. 
He  died  a  nobody,  and  was  buried  at  Cluny, 
A.  D.  1 144.  They  removed  his  body  to  the  Paraclete 
afterward,  and  when  Heloise  died,  twenty  years 
later,  they  buried  her  with  him,  in  accordance  with 
her  last  wish.  He  died  at  the  ripe  age  of  64,  and 
she  at  63 .  After  the  bodies  had  remained  entombed 
three  hundred  years,  they  were  removed  once  more. 
They  were  removed  again  in  1800,  and  finally, 
seventeen  years  afterward,  they  were  taken  up  and 
transferred  to  Pere  la  Chaise,  where  they  will  remain 

142 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

in  peace  and  quiet  until  it  comes  time  for  them  to 
get  up  and  move  again. 

History  is  silent  concerning  the  last  acts  of  the 
mountain  howitzer.  Let  the  world  say  what  it  will 
about  him,  7,  at  least,  shall  always  respect  the  mem- 
ory and  sorrow  for  the  abused  trust,  and  the  broken 
heart,  and  the  troubled  spirit  of  the  old  smooth 
bore.     Rest  and  repose  be  his! 

Such  is  the  story  of  Abelard  and  Heloise.  Such 
is  the  history  that  Lamartine  has  shed  such  cataracts 
of  tears  over.  But  that  man  never  could  come  with- 
in the  influence  of  a  subject  in  the  least  pathetic 
without  overflowing  his  banks.  He  ought  to  be 
dammed — or  leveed,  I  should  more  properly  say. 
Such  is  the  history — not  as  it  is  usually  told,  but  as 
it  is  when  stripped  of  the  nauseous  sentimentality 
that  would  enshrine  for  our  loving  worship  a  das- 
tardly seducer  like  Pierre  Abelard.  I  have  not  a 
word  to  say  against  the  misused,  faithful  girl,  and 
would  not  withhold  from  her  grave  a  single  one  of 
those  simple  tributes  which  blighted  youths  and 
maidens  offer  to  her  memory,  but  I  am  sorry  enough 
that  I  have  not  time  and  opportunity  to  write  four 
or  five  volumes  of  my  opinion  of  her  friend  the  founder 
of  the  Parachute,  or  the  Paraclete,  or  whatever  it  was. 

The  tons  of  sentiment  I  have  wasted  on  that 
unprincipled  humbug,  in  my  ignorance!  I  shall 
throttle  down  my  emotions  hereafter,  about  this  sort 
of  people,  until  I  have  read  them  up  and  know 
whether  they  are  entitled  to  any  tearful  attentions  or 
not.  I  wish  I  had  my  immortelles  back,  now,  and 
that  bunch  of  radishes. 

U3 


MARK    TWAIN 

In  Paris  we  often  saw  in  shop  windows  the  sign, 
"English  Spoken  Here,"  just  as  one  sees  in  the 
windows  at  home  the  sign,  "let  on  parle  jranqaise" 
We  always  invaded  these  places  at  once — and  in- 
variably received  the  information,  framed  in  faultless 
French,  that  the  clerk  who  did  the  English  for  the 
establishment  had  just  gone  to  dinner  and  would  be 
back  in  an  hour — would  Monsieur  buy  something? 
We  wondered  why  those  parties  happened  to  take 
their  dinners  at  such  erratic  and  extraordinary 
hours,  for  we  never  called  at  a  time  when  an  exem- 
plary Christian  would  be  in  the  least  likely  to  be 
abroad  on  such  an  errand.  The  truth  was,  it  was  a 
base  fraud — a  snare  to  trap  the  unwary — chaff  to 
catch  fledglings  with.  They  had  no  English-mur- 
dering clerk.  They  trusted  to  the  sign  to  inveigle 
foreigners  into  their  lairs,  and  trusted  to  their  own 
blandishments  to  keep  them  there  till  they  bought 
something. 

We  ferreted  out  another  French  imposition — a 
frequent  sign  to  this  effect :  "All  Manner  of  Ameri- 
can Drinks  Artistically  Prepared  Here."  We 
procured  the  services  of  a  gentleman  experienced 
in  the  nomenclature  of  the  American  bar,  and 
moved  upon  the  works  of  one  of  these  impostors. 
A  bowing,  aproned  Frenchman  skipped  forward  and 
said: 

"Que  voulez  les  messieurs?"  I  do  not  know  what 
"Que  voulez  les  messieurs"  means,  but  such  was 
his  remark. 

Our  General  said,  "We  will  take  a  whisky-straight." 

[A  stare  from  the  Frenchman.] 
144 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

4 'Well,  if  you  don't  know  what  that  is,  give  us 
a  champagne  cocktail." 

[A  stare  and  a  shrug.] 

"Well,  then,  give  us  a  sherry  cobbler." 

The  Frenchman  was  checkmated.  This  was  all 
Greek  to  him. 

"Give  us  a  brandy  smash!" 

The  Frenchman  began  to  back  away,  suspicious 
of  the  ominous  vigor  of  the  last  order — began  to 
back  away,  shrugging  his  shoulders  and  spreading 
his  hands  apologetically. 

The  General  followed  him  up  and  gained  a  com- 
plete victory.  The  uneducated  foreigner  could  not 
even  furnish  a  Santa  Cruz  Punch,  an  Eye-Opener,  a 
Stone-Fence,  or  an  Earthquake.  It  was  plain  that 
he  was  a  wicked  impostor. 

An  acquaintance  of  mine  said,  the  other  day,  that 
A^  was  doubtless  the  only  American  visitor  to  the 
Exposition  who  had  had  the  high  honor  of  being 
escorted  by  the  Emperor's  body-guard.  I  said  with 
unobtrusive  frankness  that  I  was  astonished  that 
such  a  long-legged,  lantern- jawed,  unprepossessing- 
looking  specter  as  he  should  be  singled  out  for  a  dis- 
tinction like  that,  and  asked  how  it  came  about. 
He  said  he  had  attended  a  great  military  review 
in  the  Champ  de  Mars,  some  time  ago,  and  while  the 
multitude  about  him  was  growing  thicker  and 
thicker  every  moment,  he  observed  an  open  space 
inside  the  railing.  He  left  his  carriage  and  went 
into  it.  He  was  the  only  person  there,  and  so  he 
had  plenty  of  room,  and  the  situation  being  central, 
he  could  see  all  the  preparations  going  on  about  the 

i45 


MARK    TWAIN 

field.  By  and  by  there  was  a  sound  of  music,  and 
soon  the  Emperor  of  the  French  and  the  Emperor 
of  Austria,  escorted  by  the  famous  Cent  Gardes,  en- 
tered the  inclosure.  They  seemed  not  to  observe 
him,  but  directly,  in  response  to  a  sign  from  the 
commander  of  the  Guard,  a  young  lieutenant  came 
toward  him  with  a  file  of  his  men  following,  halted, 
raised  his  hand  and  gave  the  military  salute,  and 
then  said  in  a  low  voice  that  he  was  sorry  to  have 
to  disturb  a  stranger  and  a  gentleman,  but  the  place 
was  sacred  to  royalty.  Then  this  New  Jersey  phan- 
tom rose  up  and  bowed  and  begged  pardon,  then 
with  the  officer  beside  him,  the  file  of  men  marching 
behind  him,  and  with  every  mark  of  respect,  he  was 
escorted  to  his  carriage  by  the  imperial  Cent  Gardes ! 
The  officer  saluted  again  and  fell  back,  the  New 
Jersey  sprite  bowed  in  return  and  had  presence  of 
mind  enough  to  pretend  that  he  had  simply  called 
on  a  matter  of  private  business  with  those  emperors, 
and  so  waved  them  an  adieu,  and  drove  from  the 
field! 

Imagine  a  poor  Frenchman  ignorantly  intruding 
upon  a  public  rostrum  sacred  to  some  sixpenny  dig- 
nitary in  America.  The  police  would  scare  him  to 
death,  first,  with  a  storm  of  their  elegant  blasphemy, 
and  then  pull  him  to  pieces  getting  him  away  from 
there.  We  are  measurably  superior  to  the  French 
in  some  things,  but  they  are  immeasurably  our 
betters  in  others. 

Enough  of  Paris  for  the  present.  We  have  done 
our  whole  duty  by  it.  We  have  seen  the  Tuileries, 
the  Napoleon  Column,  the  Madeleine,  that  wonder 

146 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

of  wonders  the  tomb  of  Napoleon,  all  the  great 
churches  and  museums,  libraries,  imperial  palaces, 
and  sculpture  and  picture  galleries,  the  Pantheon, 
Jardin  des  Plantes,  the  opera,  the  circus,  the  legis- 
lative body,  the  billiard-rooms,  the  barbers,  the 
grisettes — 

Ah,  the  grisettes!  I  had  almost  forgotten.  They 
are  another  romantic  fraud.  They  were  (if  you  let 
the  books  of  travel  tell  it)  always  so  beautiful — so 
neat  and  trim,  so  graceful — so  naive  and  trusting — 
so  gentle,  so  winning — so  faithful  to  their  shop 
duties,  so  irresistible  to  buyers  in  their  prattling 
importunity — so  devoted  to  their  poverty-stricken 
students  of  the  Latin  Quarter — so  light-hearted  and 
happy  on  their  Sunday  picnics  in  the  suburbs — and 
oh,  sc  charmingly,  so  delightfully  immoral! 

Stuff!  For  three  or  four  days  I  was  constantly 
saying : 

"Quick,  Ferguson!  is  that  a  grisette?" 

And  he  always  said  "No." 

He  comprehended,  at  last,  that  I  wanted  to  see 
a  grisette.  Then  he  showed  me  dozens  of  them. 
They  were  like  nearly  all  the  Frenchwomen  I  ever 
saw — homely.  They  had  large  hands,  large  feet, 
large  mouths;  they  had  pug-noses  as  a  general 
thing,  and  mustaches  that  not  even  good  breeding 
could  overlook;  they  combed  their  hair  straight 
back  without  parting;  they  were  ill-shaped,  they 
were  not  winning,  they  were  not  graceful;  I  knew 
by  their  looks  that  they  ate  garlic  and  onions;  and 
lastly  and  finally,  to  my  thinking  it  would  be  base 
flattery  to  call  them  immoral. 

T47 


MARK    TWAIN 

Aroint  thee,  wench!  I  sorrow  for  the  vagabond 
student  of  the  Latin  Quarter  now,  even  more  than 
formerly  I  envied  him.  Thus  topples  to  earth 
another  idol  of  my  infancy. 

We  have  seen  everything,  and  to-morrow  we  go 
to  Versailles.  We  shall  see  Paris  only  for  a  litcle 
while  as  we  come  back  to  take  up  our  line  of  march 
for  the  ship,  and  so  I  may  as  well  bid  the  beautiful 
city  a  regretful  farewell.  We  shall  travel  many 
thousands  of  miles  after  we  leave  here,  and  visit 
many  great  cities,  but  we  shall  find  none  so  enchant- 
ing as  this. 

Some  of  our  party  have  gone  to  England,  intend- 
ing to  take  a  roundabout  course  and  rejoin  the  vessel 
at  Leghorn  or  Naples,  several  weeks  hence.  We 
came  near  going  to  Geneva,  but  have  concluded  to 
return  to  Marseilles  and  go  up  through  Italy  from 
Genoa. 

I  will  conclude  this  chapter  with  a  remark  that  I 
am  sincerely  proud  to  be  able  to  make — and  glad, 
as  well,  that  my  comrades  cordially  indorse  it,  to 
wit:  by  far  the  handsomest  women  we  have  seen  in 
France  were  born  and  reared  in  America. 

I  feel,  now,  like  a  man  who  has  redeemed  a  failing 
reputation  and  shed  luster  upon  a  dimmed  escutch- 
eon, by  a  single  just  deed  done  at  the  eleventh  hour. 

Let  the  curtain  fall,  to  slow  music. 


148 


CHAPTER  XVI 

VERSAILLES!  It  is  wonderfully  beautiful! 
You  gaze,  and  stare,  and  try  to  understand  that 
it  is  real,  that  it  is  on  the  earth,  that  it  is  not  the 
Garden  of  Eden — but  your  brain  grows  giddy, 
stupefied  by  the  world  of  beauty  around  you,  and 
you  half  believe  you  are  the  dupe  of  an  exquisite 
dream.  The  scene  thrills  one  like  military  music! 
A  noble  palace,  stretching  its  ornamented  front 
block  upon  block  away,  till  it  seemed  that  it  would 
never  end;  a  grand  promenade  before  it,  whereon 
the  armies  of  an  empire  might  parade;  all  about  it 
rainbows  of  flowers,  and  colossal  statues  that  were 
almost  numberless,  and  yet  seemed  only  scattered 
over  the  ample  space;  broad  flights  of  stone  steps 
leading  down  from  the  promenade  to  lower  grounds 
of  the  park — stairways  that  whole  regiments  might 
stand  to  arms  upon  and  have  room  to  spare;  vast 
fountains  whose  great  bronze  effigies  discharged 
rivers  of  sparkling  water  into  the  air  and  mingled  a 
hundred  curving  jets  together  in  forms  of  matchless 
beauty;  wide  grass-carpeted  avenues  that  branched 
hither  and  thither  in  every  direction  and  wandered 
to  seemingly  interminable  distances,  walled  all  the 
way  on  either  side  with  compact  ranks  of  leafy  trees 
whose  branches  met  above  and  formed  arches  as 

149 


MARK    TWAIN 

faultless  and  as  symmetrical  as  ever  were  carved  in 
stone;  and  here  and  there  were  glimpses  of  sylvan 
lakes  with  miniature  ships  glassed  in  their  surfaces. 
And  everywhere — on  the  palace  steps,  and  the  great 
promenade,  around  the  fountains,  among  the  trees, 
and  far  under  the  arches  of  the  endless  avenues, 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  people  in  gay  costumes 
walked  or  ran  or  danced,  and  gave  to  the  fairy  pic- 
ture the  life  and  animation  which  was  all  of  per- 
fection it  could  have  lacked. 

It  was  worth  a  pilgrimage  to  see.  Everything  is 
on  so  gigantic  a  scale.  Nothing  is  small — nothing 
is  cheap.  The  statues  are  all  large;  the  palace  is 
grand;  the  park  covers  a  fair-sized  county;  the 
avenues  are  interminable.  All  the  distances  and  all 
the  dimensions  about  Versailles  are  vast.  I  used  to 
think  the  pictures  exaggerated  these  distances  and 
these  dimensions  beyond  all  reason,  and  that  they 
made  Versailles  more  beautiful  than  it  was  possible 
for  any  place  in  the  world  to  be.  I  know  now  that 
the  pictures  never  came  up  to  the  subject  in  any  re- 
spect, and  that  no  painter  could  represent  Versailles 
on  canvas  as  beautiful  as  it  is  in  reality.  I  used  to 
abuse  Louis  XIV.  for  spending  two  hundred  millions 
of  dollars  in  creating  this  marvelous  park,  when 
bread  was  so  scarce  with  some  of  his  subjects;  but 
I  have  forgiven  him  now.  He  took  a  tract  of  land 
sixty  miles  in  circumference  and  set  to  work  to 
make  this  park  and  build  this  palace  and  a  road  to 
it  from  Paris.  He  kept  36,000  men  employed  daily 
on  it,  and  the  labor  was  so  unhealthy  that  they  used 
to  die  and  be  hauled  off  by  cart-loads  every  night. 

i.so 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

The  wife  of  a  nobleman  of  the  time  speaks  of  this 
as  an  "inconvenience  "  but  naively  remarks  that  "it 
does  not  seem  worthy  of  attention  in  the  happy 
state  of  tranquillity  we  now  enjoy." 

I  always  thought  ill  of  people  at  home,  who 
trimmed  their  shrubbery  into  pyramids  and  squares 
and  spires  and  all  manner  of  unnatural  shapes,  and 
when  I  saw  the  same  thing  being  practised  in  this 
great  park  I  began  to  feel  dissatisfied.  But  I  soon 
saw  the  idea  of  the  thing  and  the  wisdom  of  it. 
They  seek  the  general  effect.  We  distort  a  dozen 
sickly  trees  into  unaccustomed  shapes  in  a  little 
yard  no  bigger  than  a  dining-room,  and  then  surely 
they  look  absurd  enough.  But  here  they  take  two 
hundred  thousand  tall  forest  trees  and  set  them  in  a 
double  row;  allow  no  sign  of  leaf  or  branch  to  grow 
on  the  trunk  lower  down  than  six  feet  above  the 
ground;  from  that  point  the  boughs  begin  to  pro- 
ject, and  very  gradually  they  extend  outward  further 
and  further  till  they  meet  overhead,  and  a  faultless 
tunnel  of  foliage  is  formed.  The  arch  is  mathe- 
matically precise.  The  effect  is  then  very  fine. 
They  make  trees  take  fifty  different  shapes,  and  so 
these  quaint  effects  are  infinitely  varied  and  pictu- 
resque. The  trees  in  no  two  avenues  are  shaped 
alike,  and  consequently  the  eye  is  not  fatigued  with 
anything  in  the  nature  of  monotonous  uniformity. 
I  will  drop  this  subject  now,  leaving  it  to  others  to 
determine  how  these  people  manage  to  make  endless 
ranks  of  lofty  forest  trees  grow  to  just  a  certain 
thickness  of  trunk  (say  a  foot  and  two-thirds) ;  how 
they  make  them  spring  to  precisely  the  same  height 

151 


MARK    TWAIN 

for  miles;  how  they  make  them  grow  so  close  to- 
gether; how  they  compel  one  huge  limb  to  spring 
from  the  same  identical  spot  on  each  tree  and  form 
the  main  sweep  of  the  arch ;  and  how  all  these  things 
are  kept  exactly  in  the  same  condition,  and  in  the 
same  exquisite  shapeliness  and  symmetry  month 
after  month  and  year  after  year — for  I  have  tried  to 
reason  out  the  problem,  and  have  failed. 

We  walked  through  the  great  hall  of  sculpture 
and  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  galleries  of  paintings 
in  the  palace  of  Versailles,  and  felt  that  to  be  in 
such  a  place  was  useless  unless  one  had  a  whole  year 
at  his  disposal.  These  pictures  are  all  battle-scenes, 
and  only  one  solitary  little  canvas  among  them  all 
treats  of  anything  but  great  French  victories.  We 
wandered,  also,  through  the  Grand  Trianon  and  the 
Petit  Trianon,  those  monuments  of  royal  prodigality, 
and  with  histories  so  mournful — filled,  as  it  is,  with 
souvenirs  of  Napoleon  the  First,  and  three  dead 
kings  and  as  many  queens.  In  one  sumptuous  bed 
they  had  all  slept  in  succession,  but  no  one  occupies 
it  now.  In  a  large  dining-room  stood  the  table  at 
which  Louis  XIV.  and  his  mistress,  Madame  Main- 
tenon,  and  after  them  Louis  XV.,  and  Pompadour, 
had  sat  at  their  meals  naked  and  unattended — for 
the  table  stood  upon  a  trap-door,  which  descended 
with  it  to  regions  below  when  it  was  necessary  to 
replenish  its  dishes.  In  a  room  of  the  Petit  Trianon 
stood  the  furniture,  just  as  poor  Marie  Antoinette 
left  it  when  the  mob  came  and  dragged  her  and  the 
King  to  Paris,  never  to  return.  Near  at  hand,  in 
the  stables,  were  prodigious  carriages  that  showed 

152 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

no  color  but  gold — carriages  used  by  former  kings 
of  France  on  state  occasions,  and  never  used  now 
save  when  a  kingly  head  is  to  be  crowned,  or  an 
imperial  infant  christened.  And  with  them  were 
some  curious  sleighs,  whose  bodies  were  shaped 
like  lions,  swans,  tigers,  etc. — vehicles  that  had  once 
been  handsome  with  pictured  designs  and  fine  work- 
manship, but  were  dusty  and  decaying  now.  They 
had  their  history.  When  Louis  XIV.  had  finished 
the  Grand  Trianon,  he  told  Maintenon  he  had 
created  a  Paradise  for  her,  and  asked  if  she  could 
think  of  anything  now  to  wish  for.  He  said  he 
wished  the  Trianon  to  be  perfection — nothing  less. 
She  said  she  could  think  of  but  one  thing — it  was 
summer,  and  it  was  balmy  France — yet  she  would  like 
well  to  sleigh-ride  in  the  leafy  avenues  of  Versailles! 
The  next  morning  found  miles  and  miles  of  grassy 
avenues  spread  thick  with  snowy  salt  and  sugar,  and 
a  procession  of  those  quaint  sleighs  waiting  to  re- 
ceive the  chief  concubine  of  the  gayest  and  most 
unprincipled  court  that  France  has  ever  seen ! 

From  sumptuous  Versailles,  with  its  palaces,  its 
statues,  its  gardens  and  its  fountains,  we  journeyed 
back  to  Paris  and  sought  its  antipodes — the  Fau- 
bourg St.  Antoine.  Little,  narrow  streets;  dirty 
children  blockading  them;  greasy,  slovenly  women 
capturing  and  spanking  them;  filthy  dens  on  first 
floors,  with  rag  stores  in  them  (the  heaviest  business 
in  the  Faubourg  is  the  chiffonnier's) ;  other  filthy 
dens  where  whole  suits  of  second  and  third  hand 
clothing  are  sold  at  prices  that  would  ruin  any  pro- 
prietor who  did  not  steal  his  stock;  still  other  filth j 

i53 


MARK    TWAIN 

dens  where  they  sold  groceries — sold  them  by  the 
halfpennyworth — five  dollars  would  buy  the  man 
out,  good  will  and  all.  Up  these  little  crooked 
streets  they  will  murder  a  man  for  seven  dollars  and 
dump  the  body  in  the  Seine.  And  up  some  other 
of  these  streets — most  of  them,  I  should  say — live 
lorettes. 

All  through  this  Faubourg  St.  Antoine,  misery, 
poverty,  vice,  and  crime  go  hand  in  hand,  and  the 
evidences  of  it  stare  one  in  the  face  from  every  side. 
Here  the  people  live  who  begin  the  revolutions. 
Whenever  there  is  anything  of  that  kind  to  be  done, 
they  are  always  ready.  They  take  as  much  genuine 
pleasure  in  building  a  barricade  as  they  do  in  cutting 
a  throat  or  shoving  a  friend  into  the  Seine.  It  is 
these  savage-looking  ruffians  who  storm  the  splen- 
did halls  of  the  Tuileries,  occasionally,  and  swarm 
into  Versailles  when  a  king  is  to  be  called  to  ac- 
count. 

But  they  will  build  no  more  barricades,  they  will 
break  no  more  soldiers'  heads  with  paving-stones. 
Louis  Napoleon  has  taken  care  of  all  that.  He  is 
annihilating  the  crooked  streets,  and  building  in  their 
stead  noble  boulevards  as  straight  as  an  arrow — 
avenues  which  a  cannon-ball  could  traverse  from  end 
to  end  without  meeting  an  obstruction  more  irre- 
sistible than  the  flesh  and  bones  of  men — boule- 
vards whose  stately  edifices  will  never  afford  refuges 
and  plotting-places  for  starving,  discontented  revolu- 
tion-breeders. Five  of  these  great  thoroughfares 
radiate  from  one  ample  center — a  center  which  is 
exceedingly  well  adapted  to  the  accommodation  of 

i54 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

heavy  artillery.  The  mobs  used  to  riot  there,  but 
they  must  seek  another  rallying-place  in  future. 
And  this  ingenious  Napoleon  paves  the  streets  of  his 
great  cities  with  a  smooth,  compact  composition  of 
asphaltum  and  sand.  No  more  barricades  of  flag- 
stones— no  more  assaulting  his  Majesty's  troops 
with  cobbles.  I  cannot  feel  friendly  toward  my 
quondam  fellow- American,  Napoleon  III.,  especially 
at  this  time,1  when  in  fancy  I  see  his  credulous 
victim,  Maximilian,  lying  stark  and  stiff  in  Mexico, 
and  his  maniac  widow  watching  eagerly  from  her 
French  asylum  for  the  form  that  will  never  come — 
but  I  do  admire  his  nerve,  his  calm  self-reliance,  his 
shrewd  good  sense. 

\July,  1867. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

WE  had  a  pleasant  journey  of  it  seaward  again. 
We  found  that  for  the  three  past  nights  our 
ship  had  been  in  a  state  of  war.  The  first  night  the 
sailors  of  a  British  ship,  being  happy  with  grog, 
came  down  on  the  pier  and  challenged  our  sailors  to 
a  free  fight.  They  accepted  with  alacrity,  repaired 
to  the  pier  and  gained — their  share  of  a  drawn 
battle.  Several  bruised  and  bloody  members  of 
both  parties  were  carried  off  by  the  police,  and  im- 
prisoned until  the  following  morning.  The  next 
night  the  British  boys  came  again  to  renew  the  fight, 
but  our  men  had  had  strict  orders  to  remain  on 
board  and  out  of  sight.  They  did  so,  and  the 
besieging  party  grew  noisy,  and  more  and  more 
abusive  as  the  fact  became  apparent  (to  them)  that 
our  men  were  afraid  to  come  out.  They  went  away, 
finally,  with  a  closing  burst  of  ridicule  and  offensive 
epithets.  The  third  night  they  came  again,  and  were 
more  obstreperous  than  ever.  They  swaggered  up 
and  down  the  almost  deserted  pier  and  hurled 
curses,  obscenity,  and  stinging  sarcasms  at  our  crew. 
It  was  more  than  human  nature  could  bear.  The 
executive  officer  ordered  our  men  ashore — with  in- 
structions not  to  fight.  They  charged  the  British 
and  gained  a  brilliant  victory.     I  probably  would 

iS6 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

not  have  mentioned  this  war  had  it  ended  differently. 
But  I  travel  to  learn,  and  I  still  remember  that  they 
picture  no  French  defeats  in  the  battle-galleries  of 
Versailles. 

It  was  like  home  to  us  to  step  on  board  the  com- 
fortable ship  again,  and  smoke  and  lounge  about  her 
breezy  decks.  And  yet  it  was  not  altogether  like 
home,  either,  because  so  many  members  of  the  fam- 
ily were  away.  We  missed  some  pleasant  faces 
which  we  would  rather  have  found  at  dinner,  and  at 
night  there  were  gaps  in  the  euchre-parties  which 
could  not  be  satisfactorily  filled.  "Moult"  was  in 
England,  Jack  in  Switzerland,  Charley  in  Spain. 
Blucher  was  gone,  none  could  tell  where.  But  we 
were  at  sea  again,  and  we  had  the  stars  and  the 
ocean  to  look  at,  and  plenty  of  room  to  meditate  in. 

In  due  time  the  shores  of  Italy  were  sighted,  and 
as  we  stood  gazing  from  the  decks  early  in  the  bright 
summer  morning,  the  stately  city  of  Genoa  rose  up 
out  of  the  sea  and  flung  back  the  sunlight  from  her 
hundred  palaces. 

Here  we  rest,  for  the  present — or  rather,  here 
we  have  been  trying  to  rest,  for  some  little  time,  but 
we  run  about  too  much  to  accomplish  a  great  deal 
in  that  line. 

I  would  like  to  remain  here.  I  had  rather  not  go 
any  further.  There  may  be  prettier  women  in 
Europe,  but  I  doubt  it.  The  population  of  Genoa 
is  120,000;  two-thirds  of  these  are  women,  I  think, 
and  at  least  two-thirds  of  the  women  are  beautiful. 
They  are  as  dressy  and  as  tasteful  and  as  graceful 
as  they   could  possibly  be  without   being  angels. 

i57 


MARK    TWAIN 

However,  angels  are  not  very  dressy,  I  believe.  At 
least  the  angels  in  pictures  are  not — they  wear 
nothing  but  wings.  But  these  Genoese  women  do 
look  so  charming.  Most  of  the  young  demoiselles 
are  robed  in  a  cloud  of  white  from  head  to  foot, 
though  many  trick  themselves  out  more  elaborately. 
Nine-tenths  of  them  wear  nothing  on  their  heads  but 
a  filmy  sort  of  veil,  which  falls  down  their  backs  like 
a  white  mist.  They  are  very  fair,  and  many  of  them 
have  blue  eyes,  but  black  and  dreamy  dark-brown 
ones  are  met  with  oftenest. 

The  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  Genoa  have  a  pleasant 
fashion  of  promenading  in  a  large  park  on  the  top 
of  a  hill  in  the  center  of  the  city,  from  six  till  nine 
in  the  evening,  and  then  eating  ices  in  a  neighboring 
garden  an  hour  or  two  longer.  We  went  to  the 
park  on  Sunday  evening.  Two  thousand  persons 
were  present,  chiefly  young  ladies  and  gentlemen. 
The  gentlemen  were  dressed  in  the  very  latest  Paris 
fashions,  and  the  robes  of  the  ladies  glinted  among 
the  trees  like  so  many  snowflakes.  The  multitude 
moved  round  and  round  the  park  in  a  great  pro- 
cession. The  bands  played,  and  so  did  the  fountains ; 
the  moon  and  the  gas-lamps  lit  up  the  scene,  and 
altogether  it  was  a  brilliant  and  an  animated  picture. 
I  scanned  every  female  face  that  passed,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  that  all  were  handsome.  I  never  saw 
such  a  freshet  of  loveliness  before.  I  do  not  see 
how  a  man  of  only  ordinary  decision  of  character 
could  marry  here,  because,  before  he  could  get  his 
mind  made  up  he  would  fall  in  love  with  somebody 
else. 

158 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Never  smoke  any  Italian  tobacco.  Never  do  it 
on  any  account.  It  makes  me  shudder  to  think 
what  it  must  be  made  of.  You  cannot  throw  an 
old  cigar  "stub  "  down  anywhere,  but  some  vagabond 
will  pounce  upon  it  on  the  instant.  I  like  to  smoke 
a  good  deal,  but  it  wounds  my  sensibilities  to  see 
one  of  these  stub-hunters  watching  me  out  of  the 
corners  of  his  hungry  eyes  and  calculating  how  long 
my  cigar  will  be  likely  to  last.  It  reminded  me  too 
painfully  of  that  San  Francisco  undertaker  who  used 
to  go  to  sick-beds  with  his  watch  in  his  hand  and 
time  the  corpse.  One  of  these  stub-hunters  followed 
us  all  over  the  park  last  night,  and  we  never  had  a 
smoke  that  was  worth  anything.  We  were  always 
moved  to  appease  him  with  the  stub  before  the  cigar 
was  half  gone,  because  he  looked  so  viciously  anxious. 
He  regarded  us  as  his  own  legitimate  prey,  by  right 
of  discovery,  I  think,  because  he  drove  off  several 
other  professionals  who  wanted  to  take  stock  in  us. 

Now,  they  surely  must  chew  up  those  old  stubs, 
and  dry  and  sell  them  for  smoking- tobacco.  There- 
fore, give  your  custom  to  other  than  Italian  brands 
of  the  article. 

"The  Superb"  and  the  "City  of  Palaces"  are 
names  which  Genoa  has  held  for  centuries.  She  is 
full  of  palaces,  certainly,  and  the  palaces  are  sump- 
tuous inside,  but  they  are  very  rusty  without,  and 
make  no  pretensions  to  architectural  magnificence. 
"Genoa,  the  Superb,"  would  be  a  felicitous  title  if 
it  referred  to  the  women. 

We  have  visited  several  of  the  palaces — immense 
thick-walled  piles,  with  great  stone  staircases,  tessei- 

i59 


MARK    TWAIN 

lated  marble  pavements  on  the  floors  (sometimes 
they  make  a  mosaic  work,  of  intricate  designs, 
wrought  in  pebbles,  or  little  fragments  of  marble 
laid  in  cement) ,  and  grand  salons  hung  with  pictures 
by  Rubens,  Guido,  Titian,  Paul  Veronese,  and  so 
on,  and  portraits  of  heads  of  the  family,  in  plumed 
helmets  and  gallant  coats  of  mail,  and  patrician 
ladies,  in  stunning  costumes  of  centuries  ago.  But, 
of  course,  the  folks  were  all  out  in  the  country  for 
the  summer,  and  might  not  have  known  enough  to 
ask  us  to  dinner  if  they  had  been  at  home,  and  so 
all  the  grand  empty  salons,  with  their  resounding 
pavements,  their  grim  pictures  of  dead  ancestors, 
and  tattered  banners  with  the  dust  of  bygone  cen- 
turies upon  them,  seemed  to  brood  solemnly  of 
death  and  the  grave,  and  our  spirits  ebbed  away, 
and  our  cheerfulness  passed  from  us.  We  never 
went  up  to  the  eleventh  story.  We  always  began  to 
suspect  ghosts.  There  was  always  an  undertaker- 
looking  servant  along,  too,  who  handed  us  a  pro- 
gram, pointed  to  the  picture  that  began  the  list 
of  the  salon  he  was  in,  and  then  stood  stiff  and  stark 
and  unsmiling  in  his  petrified  livery  till  we  were 
ready  to  move  on  to  the  next  chamber,  whereupon 
he  marched  sadly  ahead  and  took  up  another  malig- 
nantly respectful  position  as  before.  I  wasted  so 
much  time  praying  that  the  roof  would  fall  in  on 
these  dispiriting  flunkeys  that  I  had  but  little  left  to 
bestow  upon  palace  and  pictures. 

And  besides,  as  in  Paris,  we  had  a  guide.  Perdi- 
tion catch  all  the  guides.  This  one  said  he  was  the 
most  gifted  linguist  in  Genoa,  as  far  as  English  was 

160 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

concerned,  and  that  only  two  persons  in  the  city 
beside  himself  could  talk  the  language  at  all.  He 
showed  us  the  birthplace  of  Christopher  Columbus, 
and  after  we  had  reflected  in  silent  awe  before  it  for 
fifteen  minutes,  he  said  it  was  not  the  birthplace  of 
Columbus,  but  of  Columbus's  grandmother!  When 
we  demanded  an  explanation  of  his  conduct  he  only 
shrugged  his  shoulders  and  answered  in  barbarous 
Italian.  I  shall  speak  further  of  this  guide  in  a 
future  chapter.  All  the  information  we  got  out  of 
him  we  shall  be  able  to  carry  along  with  us,  I  think. 

I  have  not  been  to  church  so  often  in  a  long  time 
as  I  have  in  the  last  few  weeks.  The  people  in  these 
old  lands  seem  to  make  churches  their  specialty. 
Especially  does  this  seem  to  be  the  case  with  the 
citizens  of  Genoa.  I  think  there  is  a  church  every 
three  or  four  hundred  yards  all  over  town.  The 
streets  are  sprinkled  from  end  to  end  with  shovel- 
hatted,  long-robed,  well-fed  priests,  and  the  church 
bells  by  dozens  are  pealing  all  the  day  long,  nearly. 
Every  now  and  then  one  comes  across  a  friar  of 
orders  gray,  with  shaven  head,  long,  coarse  robe, 
rope  girdle  and  beads,  and  with  feet  cased  in  sandals 
or  entirely  bare.  These  worthies  suffer  in  the  flesh, 
and  do  penance  all  their  lives,  I  suppose,  but  they 
look  like  consummate  famine-breeders.  They  are 
all  fat  and  serene. 

The  old  Cathedral  of  San  Lorenzo  is  about  as 
notable  a  building  as  we  have  found  in  Genoa.  It 
is  vast,  and  has  colonnades  of  noble  pillars,  and  a 
great  organ,  and  the  customary  pomp  of  gilded 
moldings,  pictures,  frescoed  ceilings,  and  so  forth. 

161 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  cannot  describe  it,  of  course — it  would  require  a 
good  many  pages  to  do  that.  But  it  is  a  curious 
place.  They  said  that  half  of  it — from  the  front 
door  half-way  down  to  the  altar — was  a  Jewish 
Synagogue  before  the  Saviour  was  born,  and  that 
no  alteration  had  been  made  in  it  since  that  time. 
We  doubted  the  statement,  but  did  it  reluctantly. 
We  would  much  rather  have  believed  it.  The  place 
looked  in  too  perfect  repair  to  be  so  ancient. 

The  main  point  of  interest  about  the  cathedral  is 
the  little  Chapel  of  St.  John  the  Baptist.  They  only 
allow  women  to  enter  it  on  one  day  in  the  year,  on 
account  of  the  animosity  they  still  cherish  against 
the  sex  because  of  the  murder  of  the  Saint  to  gratify 
a  caprice  of  Herodias.  In  this  chapel  is  a  marble 
chest,  in  which,  they  told  us,  were  the  ashes  of  St. 
John;  and  around  it  was  wound  a  chain,  which, 
they  said,  had  confined  him  when  he  was  in  prison. 
We  did  not  desire  to  disbelieve  these  statements, 
and  yet  we  could  not  feel  certain  that  they  were 
correct — partly  because  we  could  have  broken  that 
chain,  and  so  could  St.  John,  and  partly  because  we 
had  seen  St.  John's  ashes  before,  in  another  church. 
We  could  not  bring  ourselves  to  think  St.  John 
had  two  sets  of  ashes. 

They  also  showed  us  a  portrait  of  the  Madonna 
which  was  painted  by  St.  Luke,  and  it  did  not  look 
half  as  old  and  smoky  as  some  of  the  pictures  by 
Rubens.  We  could  not  help  admiring  the  Apostle's 
modesty  in  never  once  mentioning  in  his  writings 
that  he  could  paint. 

But  isn't  this  relic  matter  a  little  overdone?    We 

162 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

tind  a  piece  of  the  true  cross  in  every  old  church  we 
go  into,  and  some  of  the  nails  that  held  it  together. 
I  would  not  like  to  be  positive,  but  I  think  we  have 
seen  as  much  as  a  keg  of  these  nails.  Then  there 
is  the  crown  of  thorns;  they  have  part  of  one  in 
Sainte  Chapelle,  in  Paris,  and  part  of  one,  also,  in 
Notre  Dame.  And  as  for  bones  of  St.  Denis,  I  feel 
certain  we  have  seen  enough  of  them  to  duplicate 
him,  if  necessary. 

I  only  meant  to  write  about  the  churches,  but  I 
keep  wandering  from  the  subject.  I  could  say  that 
the  Church  of  the  Annunciation  is  a  wilderness  of. 
beautiful  columns,  of  statues,  gilded  moldings,  and 
pictures  almost  countless,  but  that  would  give  no 
one  an  entirely  perfect  idea  of  the  thing,  and  so 
where  is  the  use?  One  family  built  the  whole  edi- 
fice, and  have  got  money  left.  There  is  where  the 
mystery  lies.  We  had  an  idea  at  first  that  only  a 
mint  could  have  survived  the  expense. 

These  people  here  live  in  the  heaviest,  highest, 
broadest,  darkest,  solidest  houses  one  can  imagine. 
Each  one  might  " laugh  a  siege  to  scorn."  A  hun- 
dred feet  front  and  a  hundred  high  is  about  the 
style,  and  you  go  up  three  flights  of  stairs  before 
you  begin  to  come  upon  signs  of  occupancy.  Every- 
thing is  stone,  and  stone  of  the  heaviest — floors, 
stairways,  mantels,  benches — everything.  The  walls 
are  four  or  five  feet  thick.  The  streets  generally 
are  four  or  five  to  eight  feet  wide  and  as  crooked 
as  a  corkscrew.  You  go  along  one  of  these  gloomy 
cracks,  and  look  up  and  behold  the  sky  like  a  mere 
ribbon  of  light,  far  above  your  head,  where  the  tops 

163 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  the  tall  houses  on  either  side  of  the  street  bend 
almost  together.  You  feel  as  if  you  were  at  the 
bottom  of  some  tremendous  abyss,  with  all  the  world 
far  above  you.  You  wind  in  and  out  and  here  and 
there,  in  the  most  mysterious  way,  and  have  no 
more  idea  of  the  points  of  the  compass  than  if  you 
were  a  blind  man  You  can  never  persuade  your- 
self that  these  are  actually  streets,  and  the  frowning, 
dingy,  monstrous  houses  dwellings,  till  you  see  one 
of  these  beautiful,  prettily  dressed  women  emerge 
from  them — see  her  emerge  from  a  dark,  dreary- 
looking  den  that  looks  dungeon  all  over,  from  the 
ground  away  half-way  up  to  heaven.  And  then  you 
wonder  that  such  a  charming  moth  could  come 
from  such  a  forbidding  shell  as  that.  The  streets  are 
wisely  made  narrow  and  the  houses  heavy  and  thick 
and  stony,  in  order  that  the  people  may  be  cool  in 
this  roasting  climate.  And  they  are  cool,  and  stay 
so.  And  while  I  think  of  it — the  men  wear  hats 
and  have  very  dark  complexions,  but  the  women  wear 
no  headgear  but  a  flimsy  veil  like  a  gossamer's  web, 
and  yet  are  exceedingly  fair  as  a  general  thing. 
Singular,  isn't  it? 

The  huge  palaces  of  Genoa  are  each  supposed  to 
be  occupied  by  one  family,  but  they  could  accom- 
modate a  hundred,  I  should  think.  They  are  relics 
of  the  grandeur  of  Genoa's  palmy  days — the  days 
when  she  was  a  great  commercial  and  maritime 
power  several  centuries  ago.  These  houses,  solid 
marble  palaces  though  they  be,  are,  in  many  cases, 
of  a  dull  pinkish  color,  outside,  and  from  pavement 
to  eaves  are  pictured  with  Genoese   battle-scenes, 

164 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

with  monstrous  Jupiters  and  Cupids  and  with  familiar 
illustrations  from  Grecian  mythology.  Where  the 
paint  has  yielded  to  age  and  exposure  and  is  peeling 
off  in  flakes  and  patches,  the  effect  is  not  happy.  A 
noseless  Cupid,  or  a  Jupiter  with  an  eye  out,  or  a 
Venus  with  a  fly -blister  on  her  breast,  are  not  at- 
tractive features  in  a  picture.  Some  of  these  painted 
walls  reminded  me  somewhat  of  the  tall  van,  plas- 
tered with  fanciful  bills  and  posters,  that  follows  the 
band-wagon  of  a  circus  about  a  country  village.  I 
have  not  read  or  heard  that  the  outsides  of  the 
houses  of  any  other  European  city  are  frescoed  in 
this  way. 

I  cannot  conceive  of  such  a  thing  as  Genoa  in 
ruins.  Such  massive  arches,  such  ponderous  sub- 
structions as  support  these  towering  broad-winged 
edifices,  we  have  seldom  seen  before;  and  surely 
the  great  blocks  of  stone  of  which  these  edifices  are 
built  can  never  decay;  walls  that  are  as  thick  as  an 
ordinary  American  doorway  is  high,  cannot  crumble. 

The  Republics  of  Genoa  and  Pisa  were  very 
powerful  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Their  ships  filled 
the  Mediterranean,  and  they  carried  on  an  extensive 
commerce  with  Constantinople  and  Syria.  Their 
warehouses  were  the  great  distributing  depots  from 
whence  the  costly  merchandise  of  the  East  was  sent 
abroad  over  Europe.  They  were  warlike  little  na- 
tions, and  defied,  in  those  days,  governments  that 
overshadow  them  now  as  mountains  overshadow 
molehills.  The  Saracens  captured  and  pillaged 
Genoa  nine  hundred  years  ago,  but  during  the  fol- 
lowing century  Genoa  and  Pisa  entered  into  an  offeo- 

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MARK    TWAIN 

sive  and  defensive  alliance  and  besieged  the  Sara- 
cen colonies  in  Sardinia  and  the  Balearic  Isles  with 
an  obstinacy  that  maintained  its  pristine  vigor  and 
held  to  its  purpose  for  forty  long  years.  They  were 
victorious  at  last,  and  divided  their  conquests 
equably  among  their  great  patrician  families.  De- 
scendants of  some  of  those  proud  families  still  in- 
habit the  palaces  of  Genoa,  and  trace  in  their  own 
features  a  resemblance  to  the  grim  knights  whose 
portraits  hang  in  their  stately  halls,  and  to  pictured 
beauties  with  pouting  lips  and  merry  eyes  whose 
originals  have  been  dust  and  ashes  for  many  a  dead 
and  forgotten  century. 

The  hotel  we  live  in  belonged  to  one  of  those 
great  orders  of  Knights  of  the  Cross  in  the  times  of 
the  Crusades,  and  its  mailed  sentinels  once  kept 
watch  and  ward  in  its  massive  turrets  and  woke  the 
echoes  of  these  halls  and  corridors  with  their  iron 
heels. 

But  Genoa's  greatness  has  degenerated  into  an 
unostentatious  commerce  in  velvets  and  silver  filigree 
work.  They  say  that  each  European  town  has  its 
specialty.  These  filigree  things  are  Genoa's  spe- 
cialty. Her  smiths  take  silver  ingots  and  work  them 
up  into  all  manner  of  graceful  and  beautiful  forms. 
They  make  bunches  of  flowers,  from  flakes  and  wires 
of  silver,  that  counterfeit  the  delicate  creations  the 
frost  weaves  upon  a  window-pane;  and  we  were 
shown  a  miniature  silver  temple  whose  fluted  col- 
umns, whose  Corinthian  capitals  and  rich  entabla- 
tures, whose  spire,  statues,  bells,  and  ornate  lavish- 
ness  of  sculpture  were  wrought  in  polished  silver, 

166 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  with  such  matchless  art  that  every  detail  was  a 
fascinating  study,  and  the  finished  edifice  a  wonder 
of  beauty. 

We  are  ready  to  move  again,  though  we  are  not 
really  tired,  yet,  of  the  narrow  passages  of  this  old 
marble  cave.  Cave  is  a  good  word — when  speak- 
ing of  Genoa  under  the  stars.  When  we  have  been 
prowling  at  midnight  through  the  gloomy  crevices 
they  call  streets,  where  no  footfalls  but  ours  were 
echoing,  where  only  ourselves  were  abroad,  and 
lights  appeared  only  at  long  intervals  and  at  a  dis- 
tance, and  mysteriously  disappeared  again,  and  the 
houses  at  our  elbows  seemed  to  stretch  upward 
farther  than  ever  toward  the  heavens,  the  memory 
of  a  cave  I  used  to  know  at  home  was  always  in  my 
mind,  with  its  lofty  passages,  its  silence  and  solitude, 
its  shrouding  gloom,  its  sepulchral  echoes,  its  fitting 
lights,  and  more  than  all,  its  sudden  revelations  of 
branching  crevices  and  corridors  where  we  least  ex- 
pected them. 

We  are  not  tired  of  the  endless  processions  of 
cheerful,  chattering  gossipers  that  throng  these 
courts  and  streets  all  day  long,  either;  nor  of  the 
coarse-robed  monks;  nor  of  the  "Asti"  wines, 
which  that  old  doctor  (whom  we  call  the  Oracle) 
with  customary  felicity  in  the  matter  of  getting 
everything  wrong,  misterms  "nasty."  But  we  must 
go,  nevertheless. 

Our  last  sight  was  the  cemetery  (a  burial-place 
intended  to  accommodate  60,000  bodies),  and  we 
shall  continue  to  remember  it  after  we  shall  have 
forgotten  the  palaces.     It  is  a  vast  marble  colonnaded 

167 


MARK    TWAIN 

corridor  extending  around  a  great  unoccupied  square 
of  ground;  its  broad  floor  is  marble,  and  on  every 
slab  is  an  inscription — for  every  slab  covers  a 
corpse.  On  either  side,  as  one  walks  down  the 
middle  of  the  passage,  are  monuments,  tombs,  and 
sculptured  figures  that  are  exquisitely  wrought  and 
are  full  of  grace  and  beauty.  They  are  new  and 
snowy;  every  outline  is  perfect,  every  feature  guilt- 
less of  mutilation,  flaw,  or  blemish;  and,  therefore, 
to  us  these  far-reaching  ranks  of  bewitching  forms 
are  a  hundredfold  more  lovely  than  the  damaged 
and  dingy  statuary  they  have  saved  from  the  wreck 
of  ancient  art  and  set  up  in  the  galleries  of  Paris  for 
the  worship  of  the  world. 

Well  provided  with  cigars  and  other  necessaries  of 
life,  we  are  now  ready  to  take  the  cars  for  Milan. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

ALL  day  long  we  sped  through  a  mountainous 
l\  country  whose  peaks  were  bright  with  sun- 
shine, whose  hillsides  were  dotted  with  pretty  villas 
sitting  in  the  midst  of  gardens  and  shrubbery,  and 
whose  deep  ravines  were  cool  and  shady,  and  looked 
ever  so  inviting  from  where  we  and  the  birds  were 
winging  our  flight  through  the  sultry  upper  air. 

We  had  plenty  of  chilly  tunnels  wherein  to  check 
our  perspiration,  though.  We  timed  one  of  them. 
We  were  twenty  minutes  passing  through  it,  going 
at  the  rate  of  thirty  to  thirty-five  miles  an  hour. 

Beyond  Alessandria  we  passed  the  battle-field  of 
Marengo. 

Toward  dusk  we  drew  near  Milan,  and  caught 
glimpses  of  the  city  and  the  blue  mountain-peaks 
beyond.  But  we  were  not  caring  for  these  things — 
they  did  not  interest  us  in  the  least  We  were  in  a 
fever  of  impatience;  we  were  dying  to  see  the  re- 
nowned cathedral!  We  watched — in  this  direction 
and  that — all  around — everywhere.  We  needed  no 
one  to  point  it  out — we  did  not  wish  any  one  to 
point  it  out — we  would  recognize  it,  even  in  the 
desert  of  the  great  Sahara. 

At  last,  a  forest  of  graceful  needles,  shimmering 
in  the  amber  sunlight,  rose  slowly  above  the  pygmy 

169 


MARK    TWAIN 

housetops,  as  one  sometimes  sees,  in  the  far  hori- 
zon, a  gilded  and  pinnacled  mass  of  cloud  lift  itself 
above  the  waste  of  waves,  at  sea, — the  cathedral! 
We  knew  it  in  a  moment. 

Half  of  that  night,  and  all  of  the  next  day,  this 
architectural  autocrat  was  our  sole  object  of  interest. 

What  a  wonder  it  is!  So  grand,  so  solemn,  so 
vast!  And  yet  so  delicate,  so  airy,  so  graceful!  A 
very  world  of  solid  weight,  and  yet  it  seems  in  the 
soft  moonlight  only  a  fairy  delusion  of  frostwork 
that  might  vanish  with  a  breath!  How  sharply  its 
pinnacled  angles  and  its  wilderness  of  spires  were  cut 
against  the  sky,  and  how  richly  their  shadows  fell 
upon  its  snowy  roof !  It  was  a  vision ! — a  miracle ! — 
an  anthem  sung  in  stone,  a  poem  wrought  in  marble ! 

Howsoever  you  look  at  the  great  cathedral,  it  is 
noble,  it  is  beautiful!  Wherever  you  stand  in 
Milan,  or  within  seven  miles  of  Milan,  it  is  visible — 
and  when  it  is  visible,  no  other  object  can  chain 
your  whole  attention.  Leave  your  eyes  unfettered 
by  your  will  but  a  single  instant  and  they  will  surely 
turn  to  seek  it.  It  is  the  first  thing  you  look  for 
when  you  rise  in  the  morning,  and  the  last  your 
Jngering  gaze  rests  upon  at  night.  Surely,  it  must 
be  the  princeliest  creation  that  ever  brain  of  man 
conceived. 

At  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning  we  went  and  stood 
oefore  this  marble  colossus.  The  central  one  of  its 
five  great  doors  is  bordered  with  a  bas-relief  of  birds 
and  fruits  and  beasts  and  insects,  which  have  been 
so  ingeniously  carved  out  of  the  marble  that  they 
seem  like  living  creatures — and  the  figures  are  so 

170 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

numerous  and  the  design  so  complex,  that  one 
might  study  it  a  week  without  exhausting  its  interest. 
On  the  great  steeple — surmounting  the  myriad  of 
spires — inside  of  the  spires — over  the  doors,  the 
windows — in  nooks  and  corners — everywhere  that 
a  niche  or  a  perch  can  be  found  about  the  enormous 
building,  from  summit  to  base,  there  is  a  marble 
statue,  and  every  statue  is  a  study  in  itself !  Raphael, 
Angelo,  Canova — giants  like  these  gave  birth  to 
the  designs,  and  their  own  pupils  carved  them. 
Every  face  is  eloquent  with  expression,  and  every 
attitude  is  full  of  grace.  Away  above,  on  the  lofty 
roof,  rank  on  rank  of  carved  and  fretted  spires  spring 
high  in  the  air,  and  through  their  rich  tracery  one 
sees  the  sky  beyond.  In  their  midst  the  central 
steeple  towers  proudly  up  like  the  mainmast  of  some 
great  Indiaman  among  a  fleet  of  coasters. 

We  wished  to  go  aloft.  The  sacristan  showed  us 
a  marble  stairway  (of  course  it  was  marble,  and  of 
the  purest  and  whitest — there  is  no  other  stone,  no 
brick,  no  wood,  among  its  building-materials),  and 
told  us  to  go  up  one  hundred  and  eighty-two  steps 
and  stop  till  he  came.  It  was  not  necessary  to  say 
stop — we  should  have  done  that  anyhow.  We 
were  tired  by  the  time  we  got  there.  This  was  the 
roof.  Here,  springing  from  its  broad  marble  flag- 
stones, were  the  long  files  of  spires,  looking  very 
tall  close  at  hand,  but  diminishing  in  the  distance 
like  the  pipes  of  an  organ.  We  could  see,  now,  that 
the  statue  on  the  top  of  each  was  the  size  of  a  large 
man,  though  they  all  looked  like  dolls  from  the 
street.     We  could  see,  also,  that  from  the  inside  of 

T7I 


MARK    TWAIN 

each  and  every  one  of  these  hollow  spires,  from 
sixteen  to  thirty-one  beautiful  marble  statues  looked 
out  upon  the  world  below. 

From  the  eaves  to  the  comb  of  the  roof  stretched 
in  endless  succession  great  curved  marble  beams, 
like  the  fore-and-aft  braces  of  a  steamboat,  and 
along  each  beam  from  end  to  end  stood  up  a  row  of 
richly  carved  flowers  and  fruits — each  separate  and 
distinct  in  kind,  and  over  15,000  species  repre- 
sented. At  a  little  distance  these  rows  seem  to 
close  together  like  the  ties  of  a  railroad  track,  and 
then  the  mingling  together  of  the  buds  and  blossoms 
of  this  marble  garden  forms  a  picture  that  is  very 
charming  to  the  eye. 

We  descended  and  entered.  Within  the  church, 
long  rows  of  fluted  columns,  like  huge  monuments, 
divided  the  building  into  broad  aisles,  and  on  the 
figured  pavement  fell  many  a  soft  blush  from  the 
painted  windows  above.  I  knew  the  church  was 
very  large,  but  I  could  not  fully  appreciate  its  great 
size  until  I  noticed  that  the  men  standing  far  down 
by  the  altar  looked  like  boys,  and  seemed  to  glide, 
rather  than  walk.  We  loitered  about  gazing  aloft  at 
the  monster  windows  all  aglow  with  brilliantly  col- 
ored scenes  in  the  lives  of  the  Saviour  and  His  fol- 
lowers. Some  of  these  pictures  are  mosaics,  and  so 
artistically  are  their  thousand  particles  of  tinted 
glass  or  stone  put  together  that  the  work  has  all  the 
smoothness  and  finish  of  a  painting.  We  counted 
sixty  panes  of  glass  in  one  window,  and  each  pane 
was  adorned  with  one  of  these  master  achievements 
v<>f  genius  and  patience. 

172 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

The  guide  showed  us  a  coffee-colored  piece  of 
sculpture  which  he  said  was  considered  to  have  come 
from  the  hand  of  Phidias,  since  it  was  not  possible 
that  any  other  artist,  of  any  epoch,  could  have 
copied  nature  with  such  faultless  accuracy.  The 
figure  was  that  of  a  man  without  a  skin;  with  every 
vein,  artery,  muscle,  every  fiber  and  tendon  and 
tissue  of  the  human  frame,  represented  in  minute 
detail.  It  looked  natural,  because  somehow  it  looked 
as  if  it  were  in  pain.  A  skinned  man  would  be  likely 
to  look  that  way,  unless  his  attention  were  occupied 
with  some  other  matter.  It  was  a  hideous  thing, 
and  yet  there  was  a  fascination  about  it  somewhere. 
I  am  very  sorry  I  saw  it,  because  I  shall  always  see 
it,  now.  I  shall  dream  of  it,  sometimes.  I  shall 
dream  that  it  is  resting  its  corded  arms  on  the  bed's 
head  and  looking  down  on  me  with  its  dead  eyes;  I 
shall  dream  that  it  is  stretched  between  the  sheets 
with  me  and  touching  me  with  its  exposed  muscles 
and  its  stringy  cold  legs. 

It  is  hard  to  forget  repulsive  things.  I  remember 
yet  how  I  ran  off  from  school  once,  when  I  was  a 
boy,  and  then,  pretty  late  at  night,  concluded  to 
climb  into  the  window  of  my  father's  office  and 
sleep  on  a  lounge,  because  I  had  a  delicacy  about 
going  home  and  getting  thrashed.  As  I  lay  on  the 
lounge  and  my  eyes  grew  accustomed  to  the  dark- 
ness, I  fancied  I  could  see  a  long,  dusky,  shapeless 
thing  stretched  upon  the  floor.  A  cold  shiver  went 
through  me.  I  turned  my  face  to  the  wall.  That 
did  not  answer.  I  was  afraid  that  that  thing  would 
creep  over  and  seize  me  in  the  dark.     I  turned  back 

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MARK    TWAIN 

and  stared  at  it  for  minutes  and  minutes — they 
seemed  hours.  It  appeared  to  me  that  the  lagging 
moonlight  never,  never  would  get  to  it.  I  turned  to 
the  wall  and  counted  twenty,  to  pass  the  feverish 
time  away.  I  looked — the  pale  square  was  nearer. 
I  turned  again  and  counted  fifty — it  was  almost 
touching  it.  With  desperate  will  I  turned  again  and 
counted  one  hundred,  and  faced  about,  all  in  a 
tremble.  A  white  human  hand  lay  in  the  moon- 
light! Such  an  awful  sinking  at  the  heart — such  a 
sudden  gasp  for  breath!  I  felt — I  cannot  tell  what 
I  felt.  When  I  recovered  strength  enough,  I  faced 
the  wall  again.  But  no  boy  could  have  remained 
so,  with  that  mysterious  hand  behind  him.  I 
counted  again,  and  looked — the  most  of  a  naked 
arm  was  exposed.  I  put  my  hands  over  my  eyes 
and  counted  till  I  could  stand  it  no  longer,  and  then 
— the  pallid  face  of  a  man  was  there,  with  the 
corners  of  the  mouth  drawn  down,  and  the  eyes 
fixed  and  glassy  in  death!  I  raised  to  a  sitting 
posture  and  glowered  on  that  corpse  till  the  light 
crept  down  the  bare  breast, — line  by  line — inch  by 
inch — past  the  nipple, — and  then  it  disclosed  a 
ghastly  stab! 

I  went  away  from  there.  I  do  not  say  that  I  went 
away  in  any  sort  of  a  hurry,  but  I  simply  went — 
that  is  sufficient.  I  went  out  at  the  window,  and  I 
carried  the  sash  along  with  me.  I  did  not  need  the 
sash,  but  it  was  handier  to  take  it  than  it  was  to 
leave  it,  and  so  I  took  it.  I  was  not  scared,  but  I 
was  considerably  agitated. 

VHien  I  reached  home,  they  whipped  me,  but  I 

i74 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

enjoyed  it.  It  seemed  perfectly  delightful.  That 
man  had  been  stabbed  near  the  office  that  afternoon, 
and  they  carried  him  in  there  to  doctor  him,  but  he 
only  lived  an  hour.  I  have  slept  in  the  same  room 
with  him  often,  since  then — in  my  dreams. 

Now  we  will  descend  into  the  crypt,  under  the 
grand  altar  of  Milan  cathedral,  and  receive  an  im- 
pressive sermon  from  lips  that  have  been  silent  and 
hands  that  have  been  gestureless  for  three  hundred 
years. 

The  priest  stopped  in  a  small  dungeon  and  held 
up  his  candle.  This  was  the  last  resting-place  of  a 
good  man,  a  warm-hearted,  unselfish  man;  a  man 
whose  whole  life  was  given  to  succoring  the  poor, 
encouraging  the  faint-hearted,  visiting  the  sick;  in 
relieving  distress,  whenever  and  wherever  he  found 
it.  His  heart,  his  hand,  and  his  purse  were  always 
open.  With  his  story  in  one's  mind  he  can  almost 
see  his  benignant  countenance  moving  calmly  among 
the  haggard  faces  of  Milan  in  the  days  when  the 
plague  swept  the  city,  brave  where  all  others  were 
cowards,  full  of  compassion  where  pity  had  been 
crushed  out  of  all  other  breasts  by  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation  gone  mad  with  terror,  cheering  all, 
praying  with  all,  helping  all,  with  hand  and  brain 
and  purse,  at  a  time  when  parents  forsook  their 
children,  the  friend  deserted  the  friend,  and  the 
brother  turned  away  from  the  sister  while  her  plead- 
ings were  still  wailing  in  his  ears. 

This  was  good  St.  Charles  Borromeo,  Bishop  of 
Milan.  The  people  idolized  him;  princes  lavished 
uncounted  treasures  upon  him.     We  stood  in   his 

i75 


MARK    TWAIN 

tomb.  Near  by  was  the  sarcophagus,  lighted  by  the 
dripping  candles.  The  walls  were  faced  with  bas- 
reliefs  representing  scenes  in  his  life  done  in  massive 
silver.  The  priest  put  on  a  short  white  lace  garment 
over  his  black  robe,  crossed  himself,  bowed  rever- 
ently, and  began  to  turn  a  windlass  slowly.  The 
sarcophagus  separated  in  two  parts,  lengthwise,  and 
the  lower  part  sank  down  and  disclosed  a  coffin  of 
rock  crystal  as  clear  as  the  atmosphere.  Within  lay 
the  body,  robed  in  costly  habiliments  covered  with 
gold  embroidery  and  starred  with  scintillating  gems. 
The  decaying  head  was  black  with  age,  the  dry  skin 
was  drawn  tight  to  the  bones,  the  eyes  were  gone, 
there  was  a  hole  in  the  temple  and  another  in  the 
cheek,  and  the  skinny  lips  were  parted  as  in  a  ghastly 
smile!  Over  this  dreadful  face,  its  dust  and  decay, 
and  its  mocking  grin,  hung  a  crown  sown  thick  with 
flashing  brilliants;  and  upon  the  breast  lay  crosses 
and  croziers  of  solid  gold  that  were  splendid  with 
emeralds  and  diamonds. 

How  poor,  and  cheap,  and  trivial  these  gewgaws 
seemed  in  presence  of  the  solemnity,  the  grandeur, 
the  awful  majesty  of  Death!  Think  of  Milton, 
Shakespeare,  Washington,  standing  before  a  reverent 
world  tricked  out  in  the  glass  beads,  the  brass  ear- 
rings, and  tin  trumpery  of  the  savages  of  the  plains ! 

Dead  Borromeo  preached  his  pregnant  sermon, 
and  its  burden  was:  You  that  worship  the  vanities 
of  earth — you  that  long  for  worldly  honor,  worldly 
wealth,  worldly  fame — behold  their  worth! 

To  us  it  seemed  that  so  good  a  man,  so  kind  a 
heart,  so  simple  a  nature,  deserved  rest  and  peace  in 

176 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

a  grave  sacred  from  the  intrusion  of  prying  eyes, 
and  believed  that  he  himself  would  have  preferred 
to  have  it  so,  but  perad venture  our  wisdom  was  at 
fault  in  this  regard. 

As  we  came  out  upon  the  floor  of  the  church 
again,  another  priest  volunteered  to  show  us  the 
treasures  of  the  church.  What,  more?  The  furni- 
ture of  the  narrow  chamber  of  death  we  had  just 
visited,  weighed  six  millions  of  francs  in  ounces  and 
carats  alone,  without  a  penny  thrown  into  the  ac- 
count for  the  costly  workmanship  bestowed  upon 
them!  But  we  followed  into  a  large  room  filled 
with  tall  wooden  presses  like  wardrobes.  He  threw 
them  open,  and  behold,  the  cargoes  of  "crude 
bullion"  of  the  assay-offices  of  Nevada  faded  out  of 
my  memory.  There  were  Virgins  and  bishops  there, 
above  their  natural  size,  made  of  solid  silver,  each 
worth,  by  weight,  from  eight  hundred  thousand  to 
two  millions  of  francs,  and  bearing  gemmed  books 
in  their  hands  worth  eighty  thousand;  there  were 
bas-reliefs  that  weighed  six  hundred  pounds,  carved 
in  solid  silver;  croziers  and  crosses,  and  candlesticks 
six  and  eight  feet  high,  all  of  virgin  gold,  and  bril- 
liant with  precious  stones;  and  beside  these  were 
all  manner  of  cups  and  vases,  and  such  things,  rich 
in  proportion.  It  was  an  Aladdin's  palace.  The 
treasures  here,  by  simple  weight,  without  counting 
workmanship,  were  valued  at  fifty  millions  of  francs ! 
If  I  could  get  the  custody  of  them  for  a  while,  I  fear 
me  the  market  price  of  silver  bishops  would  advance 
shortly,  on  account  of  their  exceeding  scarcity  in 
the  Cathedral  of  Milan. 

177 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  priests  showed  us  two  of  St.  Paul's  fingers, 
and  one  of  St.  Peter's;  a  bone  of  Judas  Iscariot  (it 
was  black),  and  also  bones  of  all  the  other  disciples; 
a  handkerchief  in  which  the  Saviour  had  left  the 
impression  of  his  face.  Among  the  most  precious 
of  relics  were,  a  stone  from  the  Holy  Sepulcher, 
part  of  the  crown  of  thorns  (they  have  a  whole  one 
at  Notre  Dame),  a  fragment  of  the  purple  robe 
worn  by  the  Saviour,  a  nail  from  the  Cross,  and  a 
picture  of  the  Virgin  and  Child  painted  by  the 
veritable  hand  of  St.  Luke.  This  is  the  second  of 
St.  Luke's  Virgins  we  have  seen.  Once  a  year  all 
these  holy  relics  are  carried  in  procession  through 
the  streets  of  Milan 

I  like  to  revel  in  the  dryest  details  of  the  great 
cathedral.  The  building  is  five  hundred  feet  long 
by  one  hundred  and  eighty  wide,  and  the  principal 
steeple  is  in  the  neighborhood  of  four  hundred  feet 
high.  It  has  7,148  marble  statues,  and  will  have 
upward  of  three  thousand  more  when  it  is  finished. 
In  addition,  it  has  one  thousand  five  hundred  bas- 
reliefs.  It  has  one  hundred  and  thirty-six  spires — 
twenty-one  more  are  to  be  added.  Each  spire  is 
surmounted  by  a  statue  six  and  a  half  feet  high. 
Everything  about  the  church  is  marble,  and  all  from 
the  same  quarry ;  it  was  bequeathed  to  the  Archbish- 
opric for  this  purpose  centuries  ago.  So  nothing 
but  the  mere  workmanship  costs;  still  that  is  ex- 
pensive^— the  bill  foots  up  six  hundred  and  eighty- 
four  millions  of  francs,  thus  far  (considerably  over 
a  hundred  millions  of  dollars),  and  it  is  estimated 
that  it  will  take  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  yet  to 

178 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

finish  the  cathedral.  It  looks  complete,  but  is  far 
from  being  so.  We  saw  a  new  statue  put  in  its 
niche  yesterday,  alongside  of  one  which  had  been 
standing  these  four  hundred  years,  they  said.  There 
are  four  staircases  leading  up  to  the  main  steeple, 
each  of  which  cost  a  hundred  thousand  dollars,  with 
the  four  hundred  and  eight  statues  which  adorn 
them.  Marcoda  Campione  was  the  architect  who  de- 
signed the  wonderful  structure  more  than  five  hun- 
dred years  ago,  and  it  took  him  forty-six  years  to 
work  out  the  plan  and  get  it  ready  to  hand  over  to 
the  builders.  He  is  dead  now.  The  building  was 
begun  a  little  less  than  five  hundred  years  ago,  and 
the  third  generation  hence  will  not  see  it  completed. 

The  building  looks  best  by  moonlight,  because 
the  older  portions  of  it  being  stained  with  age,  con- 
trast unpleasantly  with  the  newer  and  whiter  por- 
tions. It  seems  somewhat  too  broad  for  its  height, 
but  maybe  familiarity  with  it  might  dissipate  this 
impression. 

They  say  that  the  Cathedral  of  Milan  is  second 
only  to  St.  Peter's  at  Rome.  I  cannot  understand 
how  it  can  be  second  to  anything  made  by  human 
hands. 

We  bid  it  good-by  now — possibly  for  all  time. 
How  surely,  in  some  future  day,  when  the  memory 
of  it  shall  have  lost  its  vividness,  shall  we  half 
believe  we  have  seen  it  in  a  wonderful  dream,  but 
never  with  waking  eyes! 


CHAPTER  XIX 

"1^\0  y°u  wis  zo  haut  can  be?" 

J )      That  was  what  the  guide  asked,  when  we 

were  looking  up  at  the  bronze  horses  on  the  Arch 
of  Peace.  It  meant,  Do  you  wish  to  go  up  there? 
I  give  it  as  a  specimen  of  guide-English.  These  are 
the  people  that  make  life  a  burthen  to  the  tourist. 
Their  tongues  are  never  still.  They  talk  forever  and 
forever,  and  that  is  the  kind  of  billingsgate  they  use. 
Inspiration  itself  could  hardly  comprehend  them.  If 
they  would  only  show  you  a  masterpiece  of  art,  or  a 
venerable  tomb,  or  a  prison-house,  or  a  battle-field, 
hallowed  by  touching  memories,  or  historical  reminis- 
cences, or  grand  traditions,  and  then  step  aside  and 
hold  still  for  ten  minutes  and  let  you  think,  it  would 
not  be  so  bad.  But  they  interrupt  every  dream, 
every  pleasant  train  of  thought,  with  their  tiresome 
cackling.  Sometimes  when  I  have  been  standing  be- 
fore some  cherished  old  idol  of  mine  that  I  remem- 
bered years  and  years  ago  in  pictures  in  the  geog- 
raphy at  school,  I  have  thought  I  would  give  a 
whole  world  if  the  human  parrot  at  my  side  would 
suddenly  perish  where  he  stood  and  leave  me  to 
gaze,  and  ponder,  and  worship. 

No,  we  did  not  "wis  zo  haut  can  be."  We 
wished  to  go  to  La  Scala,  the  largest  theater  in  the 

180 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

*orld,  I  think  they  call  it.  We  did  so.  It  was  a 
large  place.  Seven  separate  and  distinct  masses  of 
humanity — six  great  circles  and  a  monster  parquette. 

We  wished  to  go  to  the  Ambrosian  Library,  and 
we  did  that  also.  We  saw  a  manuscript  of  Virgil, 
with  annotations  in  the  handwriting  of  Petrarch,  the 
gentleman  who  loved  another  man's  Laura,  and 
lavished  upon  her  all  through  life  a  love  which  was  a 
clear  waste  of  the  raw  material.  It  was  sound  senti- 
ment, but  bad  judgment.  It  brought  both  parties 
fame,  and  created  a  fountain  of  commiseration  for 
them  in  sentimental  breasts  that  is  running  yet.  But 
who  says  a  word  in  behalf  of  poor  Mr.  Laura?  (I 
do  not  know  his  other  name.)  Who  glorifies  him? 
Who  bedews  him  with  tears?  Who  writes  poetry 
about  him?  Nobody.  How  do  you  suppose  he 
liked  the  state  of  things  that  has  given  the  world  so 
much  pleasure?  How  did  he  enjoy  having  another 
man  following  his  wife  everywhere  and  making  her 
name  a  familiar  word  in  every  garHc-exterminating 
mouth  in  Italy  with  his  sonnets  to  her  pre-empted 
eyebrows?  They  got  fame  and  sympathy — he  got 
neither.  This  is  a  peculiarly  felicitous  instance  of 
what  is  called  poetical  justice.  It  is  all  very  fine; 
but  it  does  not  chime  with  my  notions  of  right.  It 
is  too  one-sided — too  ungenerous.  Let  the  world 
go  on  fretting  about  Laura  and  Petrarch  if  it  will; 
but  as  for  me,  my  tears  and  my  lamentations  shall 
be  lavished  upon  the  unsung  defendant. 

We  saw  also  an  autograph  letter  of  Lucrezia 
Borgia,  a  lady  for  whom  I  have  always  entertained 
the  highest  respect,  on  account  of  her  rare  histrionic 

181 


MARK    TWAIN 

capabilities,  her  opulence  in  solid  gold  goblets  made 
of  gilded  wood,  her  high  distinction  as  an  operatic 
screamer,  and  the  facility  with  which  she  could  order 
a  sextuple  funeral  and  get  the  corpses  ready  for  it. 
We  saw  one  single  coarse  yellow  hair  from  Lucre- 
zia's  head,  likewise.  It  awoke  emotions,  but  we 
still  live.  In  this  same  library  we  saw  some  drawings 
by  Michael  Angelo  (these  Italians  call  him  Mickel 
Angelo),  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  (They  spell  it 
Vinci  and  pronounce  it  Vinchy;  foreigners  always 
spell  better  than  they  pronounce.)  We  reserve  our 
opinion  of  these  sketches. 

In  another  building  they  showed  us  a  fresco 
representing  some  lions  and  other  beasts  drawing 
chariots;  and  they  seemed  to  project  so  far  from 
the  wall  that  we  took  them  to  be  sculptures.  The 
artist  had  shrewdly  heightened  the  delusion  by 
painting  dust  on  the  creatures'  backs,  as  if  it  had 
fallen  there  naturally  and  properly.  Smart  fellow 
— if  it  be  smart  to  deceive  strangers. 

Elsewhere  we  saw  a  huge  Roman  amphitheater, 
with  its  stone  seats  still  in  good  preservation. 
Modernized,  it  is  now  the  scene  of  more  peaceful 
recreations  than  the  exhibition  of  a  party  of  wild 
beasts  with  Christians  for  dinner.  Part  of  the  time, 
the  Milanese  use  it  for  a  race-track,  and  at  other 
seasons  they  flood  it  with  water  and  have  spirited 
yachting  regattas  there  The  guide  told  us  these 
things,  and  he  would  hardly  try  so  hazardous  an 
experiment  as  the  telling  of  a  falsehood,  when  it  is 
all  he  can  do  to  speak  the  truth  in  English  without 
getting  the  lockjaw. 

182 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

In  another  place  we  were  shown  a  sort  of  summer 
arbor,  with  a  fence  before  it.  We  said  that  was 
nothing.  We  looked  again,  and  saw,  through  the 
arbor,  an  endless  stretch  of  garden,  and  shrubbery, 
and  grassy  lawn.  We  were  perfectly  willing  to  go 
in  there  and  rest,  but  it  could  not  be  done.  It  was 
only  another  delusion — a  painting  by  some  ingenious 
artist  with  little  charity  in  his  heart  for  tired  folk. 
The  deception  was  perfect.  No  one  could  have 
imagined  the  park  was  not  real.  We  even  thought 
we  smelled  the  flowers  at  first. 

We  got  a  carriage  at  twilight  and  drove  in  the 
shaded  avenues  with  the  other  nobility,  and  after 
dinner  we  took  wine  and  ices  in  a  fine  garden  with 
the  great  public.  The  music  was  excellent,  the 
flowers  and  shrubbery  were  pleasant  to  the  eye,  the 
scene  vivacious,  everybody  was  genteel  and  well- 
behaved,  and  the  ladies  were  slightly  mustached, 
and  handsomely  dressed,  but  very  homely. 

We  adjourned  to  a  cafe  and  played  billiards  an 
hour,  and  I  made  six  or  seven  points  by  the  doctor 
pocketing  his  ball,  and  he  made  as  many  by  my 
pocketing  my  ball.  We  came  near  making  a  carom 
sometimes,  but  not  the  one  we  were  trying  to  make. 
The  table  was  of  the  usual  European  style — cushions 
dead  and  twice  as  high  as  the  balls;  the  cues  in  bad 
repair.  The  natives  play  only  a  sort  of  pool  on  them. 
We  have  never  seen  anybody  playing  the  French 
three-ball  game  yet,  and  I  doubt  if  there  is  any 
such  game  known  in  France,  or  that  there  lives  any 
man  mad  enough  to  try  to  play  it  on  one  of  these 
European  tables.     We  had  to  stop  playing,  finally, 

183 


MARK    TWAIN 

because  Dan  got  to  sleeping  fifteen  minutes  between 
the  counts  and  paying  no  attention  to  his  marking. 

Afterward  we  walked  up  and  down  one  of  the 
most  popular  streets  for  some  time,  enjoying  other 
people's  comfort  and  wishing  we  could  export  some 
of  it  to  our  restless,  driving,  vitality-consuming 
marts  at  home.  Just  in  this  one  matter  lies  the 
main  charm  of  life  in  Europe — comfort.  In  Amer- 
ica, we  hurry — which  is  well;  but  when  the  day's 
work  is  done,  we  go  on  thinking  of  losses  and  gains, 
we  plan  for  the  morrow,  we  even  carry  our  business 
cares  to  bed  with  us,  and  toss  and  worry  over  them 
when  we  ought  to  be  restoring  our  racked  bodies 
and  brains  with  sleep.  We  burn  up  our  energies 
with  these  excitements,  and  either  die  early  or  drop 
into  a  lean  and  mean  old  age  at  a  time  of  life  which 
they  call  a  man's  prime  in  Europe.  When  an  acre 
of  ground  has  produced  long  and  well,  we  let  it  lie 
fallow  and  rest  for  a  season;  we  take  no  man  clear 
across  the  continent  in  the  same  coach  he  started 
in — the  coach  is  stabled  somewhere  on  the  plains  and 
its  heated  machinery  allowed  to  cool  for  a  few  days; 
when  a  razor  has  seen  long  service  and  refuses  to 
hold  an  edge,  the  barber  lays  it  away  for  a  few  weeks, 
and  the  edge  comes  back  of  its  own  accord.  We 
bestow  thoughtful  care  upon  inanimate  objects, 
but  none  upon  ourselves.  What  a  robust  people, 
what  a  nation  of  thinkers  we  might  be,  if  we  would 
only  lay  ourselves  on  the  shelf  occasionally  and 
renew  our  edges! 

I  do  envy  these  Europeans  the  comfort  they  take. 
When  the  work  of  the  day  is  done,  they  forget  it. 

184 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Some  of  them  go,  with  wife  and  children,  to  a  beer- 
hall,  and  sit  quietly  and  genteelly  drinking  a  mug  or 
two  of  ale  and  listening  to  music;  others  walk  the 
streets,  others  drive  in  the  avenues;  others  assemble 
in  the  great  ornamental  squares  in  the  early  evening 
to  enjoy  the  sight  and  the  fragrance  of  flowers  and 
to  hear  the  military  bands  play — no  European  city 
being  without  its  fine  military  music  at  eventide; 
and  yet  others  of  the  populace  sit  in  the  open  air  in 
front  of  the  refreshment -houses  and  eat  ices  and 
drink  mild  beverages  that  could  not  harm  a  child. 
They  go  to  bed  moderately  early,  and  sleep  well. 
They  are  always  quiet,  always  orderly,  always  cheer- 
ful, comfortable,  and  appreciative  of  life  and  its 
manifold  blessings.  One  never  sees  a  drunken  man 
among  them.  The  change  that  has  come  over  our 
little  party  is  surprising.  Day  by  day  we  lose  some 
of  our  restlessness  and  absorb  some  of  the  spirit  of 
quietude  and  ease  that  is  in  the  tranquil  atmosphere 
about  us  and  in  the  demeanor  of  the  people.  We 
grow  wise  apace.  We  begin  to  comprehend  what 
life  is  for. 

We  have  had  a  bath  in  Milan,  in  a  public  bath- 
house. They  were  going  to  put  all  three  of  us  in 
one  bathtub,  but  we  objected.  Each  of  us  had  an 
Italian  farm  on  his  back.  We  could  have  felt 
affluent  if  we  had  been  officially  surveyed  and  fenced 
in.  We  chose  to  have  three  bathtubs,  and  large 
ones — tubs  suited  to  the  dignity  of  aristocrats  who 
had  real  estate,  and  brought  it  with  them.  After 
we  were  stripped  and  had  taken  the  first  chilly 
dash,  we  discovered  that  haunting  atrocity  that  has 

185 


MARK    TWAIN 

embittered  our  lives  in  so  many  cities  and  villages  of 
Italy  and  France — there  was  no  soap.  I  called. 
A  woman  answered,  and  I  barely  had  time  to  throw 
myself  against  the  door — she  would  have  been  in, 
in  another  second.     I  said: 

1 '  Beware,  woman !  Go  away  from  here — go  away, 
now,  or  it  will  be  the  worse  for  you.  I  am  an  un- 
protected male,  but  I  will  preserve  my  honor  at  the 
peril  of  my  life!" 

These  words  must  have  frightened  her,  for  she 
scurried  away  very  fast. 

Dan's  voice  rose  on  the  air: 
"Oh,  bring  some  soap,  why  don't  you!" 
The  reply  was  Italian.     Dan  resumed: 
"Soap,  you  know — soap.     That  is  what  I  want 
— soap.     S-o-a-p,  soap;  s-o-p-e,  soap;  s-o-u-p,  soap. 
Hurry  up!     I  don't  know  how  you  Irish  spell  it, 
but  I  want  it.     Spell  it  to  suit  yourself,  but  fetch 
it.     I'm  freezing." 

I  heard  the  doctor  say,  impressively: 
"Dan,  how  often  have  we  told  you  that  these 
foreigners  cannot  understand  English?  Why  will 
you  not  depend  upon  us  ?  Why  will  you  not  tell  us 
what  you  want,  and  let  us  ask  for  it  in  the  language 
of  the  country?  It  would  save  us  a  great  deal  of 
the  humiliation  your  reprehensible  ignorance  causes 
us.  I  will  address  this  person  in  his  mother-tongue : 
'Here,  cospetto!  corpo  di  Bacco!  Sacramento! 
Solferino! — Soap,  you  son  of  a  gun!'  Dan,  if 
you  would  let  us  talk  for  you,  you  would  never 
expose  your  ignorant  vulgarity." 

Even  this  fluent  discharge  of  Italian  did  not  bring 

1 86 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  soap  at  once,  but  there  was  a  good  reason  for  it. 
There  was  not  such  an  article  about  the  establish- 
ment. It  is  my  belief  that  there  never  had  been. 
They  had  to  send  far  up-town,  and  to  several  dif- 
ferent places  before  they  finally  got  it,  so  they 
said.  We  had  to  wait  twenty  or  thirty  minutes. 
The  same  thing  had  occurred  the  evening  before,  at 
the  hotel.  I  think  I  have  divined  the  reason  for  this 
state  of  things  at  last.  The  English  know  how  to 
travel  comfortably,  and  they  carry  soap  with  them; 
other  foreigners  do  not  use  the  article. 

At  every  hotel  we  stop  at  we  always  have  to  send 
out  for  soap,  at  the  last  moment,  when  we  are  groom- 
ing ourselves  for  dinner,  and  they  put  it  in  the 
bill  along  with  the  candles  and  other  nonsense.  In 
Marseilles  they  make  half  the  fancy  toilet  soap  we 
consume  in  America,  but  the  Marseillaise  only  have 
a  vague  theoretical  idea  of  its  use,  which  they  have 
obtained  from  books  of  travel,  just  as  they  have  ac- 
quired an  uncertain  notion  of  clean  shirts,  and  the 
peculiarities  of  the  gorilla,  and  other  curious  matters. 
This  reminds  me  of  poor  Blucher's  note  to  the  land- 
lord in  Paris: 

Paris,  le  7  Juillet. 

Monsieur  le  Landlord — Sir:  Pourquoi  don't  you  mettez  some 
savon  in  your  bed -chambers?  Est-ce  que  vous  pensez  I  will  steal 
it?  La  nidi  pass'ee  you  charged  me  pour  deux  chandelles  when 
I  only  had  one;  hier  vous  avez  charged  me  avec  glace  when  I  had 
none  at  all;  tout  I es  jours  you  are  coming  some  fresh  game  or 
other  on  me,  mais  vous  ne  pouvez  pas  play  this  savon  dodge  on  me 
twice.  Savon  is  a  necessary  de  la  vie  to  anybody  but  a  French- 
man, et  je  Vaurai  hors  de  cet  hotel  or  make  trouble.  You  hear 
me.    Allons. 

Blucher. 

is? 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  remonstrated  against  the  sending  of  this  note, 
because  it  was  so  mixed  up  that  the  landlord  would 
never  be  able  to  make  head  or  tail  of  it ;  but  Blucher 
said  he  guessed  the  old  man  could  read  the  French 
of  it  and  average  the  rest. 

Blucher's  French  is  bad  enough,  but  it  is  not 
much  worse  than  the  English  one  finds  in  advertise- 
ments all  over  Italy  every  day.  For  instance,  ob- 
serve the  printed  card  of  the  hotel  we  shall  probably 
stop  at  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Como: 

NOTISH 

This  hotel  which  the  best  it  is  in  Italy  and  most 
superb,  is  handsome  locate  on  the  best  situation  of  the 
lake,  with  the  most  splendid  view  near  the  Villas  Melzy, 
to  the  King  of  Belgian,  and  Serbelloni.  This  hotel  have 
recently  enlarge,  do  offer  all  commodities  on  moderate 
price,  at  the  strangers  gentlemen  who  whish  spend  the 
seasons  on  the  Lake  Come. 

How  is  that  for  a  specimen?  In  the  hotel  is  a 
handsome  little  chapel  where  an  English  clergyman 
is  employed  to  preach  to  such  of  the  guests  of  the 
house  as  hail  from  England  and  America,  and  this 
fact  is  also  set  forth  in  barbarous  English  in  the 
same  advertisement.  Wouldn't  you  have  supposed 
that  the  adventurous  linguist  who  framed  the  card 
would  have  known  enough  to  submit  it  to  that  clergy- 
man before  he  sent  it  to  the  printer? 

Here,  in  Milan,  in  an  ancient  tumble-down  ruin  of 
a  church,  is  the  mournful  wreck  of  the  most  cele- 
brated painting  in  the  world — "The  Last  Supper," 
by  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  We  are  not  infallible  judges 
of  pictures,  but,  of  course,  we  went  there  to  see  this 

188 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

wonderful  painting,  once  so  beautiful,  always  so 
worshiped  by  masters  in  art,  and  forever  to  be 
famous  in  song  and  story.  And  the  first  thing  that 
occurred  was  the  infliction  on  us  of  a  placard  fairly 
reeking  with  wretched  English.     Take  a  morsel  of  it : 

Bartholomew  (that  is  the  first  figure  on  the  left  hand  side 
at  the  spectator),  uncertain  and  doubtful  about  what  he  thinks 
to  have  heard,  and  upon  which  he  wants  to  be  assured  by  him- 
self at  Christ  and  by  no  others. 

Good,  isn't  it?  And  then  Peter  is  described  as 
"argumenting  in  a  threatening  and  angrily  condition 
at  Judas  Iscariot." 

This  paragraph  recalls  the  picture.  "The  Last 
Supper"  is  painted  on  the  dilapidated  wall  of  what 
was  a  little  chapel  attached  to  the  main  church  in 
ancient  times,  I  suppose.  It  is  battered  and  scarred 
in  every  direction,  and  stained  and  discolored  by 
time,  and  Napoleon's  horses  kicked  the  legs  off  most 
the  disciples  when  they  (the  horses,  not  the  disciples) 
were  stabled  there  more  than  half  a  century  ago. 

I  recognized  the  old  picture  in  a  moment — the 
Saviour  with  bowed  head  seated  at  the  center  of  a 
long,  rough  table  with  scattering  fruits  and  dishes 
upon  it,  and  six  disciples  on  either  side  in  their  long 
robes,  talking  to  each  other — the  picture  from  which 
all  engravings  and  all  copies  have  been  made  for 
three  centuries.  Perhaps  no  living  man  has  ever 
known  an  attempt  to  paint  the  Lord's  Supper  dif- 
ferently. The  world  seems  to  have  become  settled 
in  the  belief,  long  ago,  that  it  is  not  possible  for 
human  genius  to  outdo  this  creation  of  Da  Vinci's 

189 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  suppose  painters  will  go  on  copying  it  as  long  as 
any  of  the  original  is  left  visible  to  the  eye.  There 
were  a  dozen  easels  in  the  room,  and  as  many  artists 
transferring  the  great  picture  to  their  canvases. 
Fifty  proofs  of  steel  engravings  and  lithographs 
were  scattered  around,  too.  And  as  usual,  I  could 
not  help  noticing  how  superior  the  copies  were  to 
the  original,  that  is,  to  my  inexperienced  eye. 
Wherever  you  find  a  Raphael,  a  Rubens,  a  Michael 
Angelo,  a  Caracci,  or  a  Da  Vinci  (and  we  see  them 
every  day)  you  find  artists  copying  them,  and  the 
copies  are  always  the  handsomest.  Maybe  the 
originals  were  handsome  when  they  were  new,  but 
they  are  not  now. 

This  picture  is  about  thirty  feet  long,  and  ten  or 
twelve  high,  I  should  think,  and  the  figures  are  at 
least  life-size.  It  is  one  of  the  largest  paintings  in 
Europe. 

The  colors  are  dimmed  with  age ;  the  countenances 
are  scaled  and  marred,  and  nearly  all  expression  is 
gone  from  them;  the  hair  is  a  dead  blur  upon  the 
wall,  and  there  is  no  life  in  the  eyes.  Only  the 
attitudes  are  certain. 

People  come  here  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  and 
glorify  this  masterpiece.  They  stand  entranced  be- 
fore it  with  bated  breath  and  parted  lips,  and  when 
they  speak,  it  is  only  in  the  catchy  ejaculations  of 
rapture : 

"Oh,  wonderful !" 

"Such  expression!'* 

"Such  grace  of  attitude!" 

"Such  dignity !" 

190 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"Such  faultless  drawing!" 

"Such  matchless  coloring!" 

"Such  feeling!" 

"What  delicacy  of  touch!" 

"What  sublimity  of  conception!" 

"A  vision!  a  vision!" 

I  only  envy  these  people;  I  envy  them  their 
honest  admiration,  if  it  be  honest — their  delight,  if 
they  feel  delight.  I  harbor  no  animosity  toward 
any  of  them.  But  at  the  same  time  the  thought 
will  intrude  itself  upon  me,  How  can  they  see  what 
is  not  visible?  What  would  you  think  of  a  man 
who  looked  at  some  decayed,  blind,  toothless,  pock- 
marked Cleopatra,  and  said:  "What  matchless 
beauty!  What  soul!  What  expression!"  What 
would  you  think  of  a  man  who  gazed  upon  a  dingy, 
foggy  sunset,  and  said:  "What  sublimity!  what 
feeling!  what  richness  of  coloring!"  What  would 
you  think  of  a  man  who  stared  in  ecstasy  upon  a 
desert  of  stumps  and  said:  "Oh,  my  soul,  my  beat- 
ing heart,  what  a  noble  forest  is  here!" 

You  would  think  that  those  men  had  an  astonish- 
ing talent  for  seeing  things  that  had  already  passed 
away.  It  was  what  I  thought  when  I  stood  before 
the  "Last  Supper"  and  heard  men  apostrophizing 
wonders  and  beauties  and  perfections  which  had 
faded  out  of  the  picture  and  gone,  a  hundred  years 
before  they  were  born.  We  can  imagine  the  beauty 
that  was  once  in  an  aged  face;  we  can  imagine  the 
forest  if  we  see  the  stumps;  but  we  cannot  abso- 
lutely see  these  things  when  they  are  not  there.  I 
am  willing  to  believe  that  the  eye  of  the  practised 

IQI 


MARK    TWAIN 

artist  can  rest  upon  the  "Last  Supper"  and  renew  a 
luster  where  only  a  hint  of  it  is  left,  supply  a  tint 
that  has  faded  away,  restore  an  expression  that  is 
gone;  patch,  and  color,  and  add  to  the  dull  canvas 
until  at  last  its  figures  shall  stand  before  him  aglow 
with  life,  the  feeling,  the  freshness,  yea,  with  all 
the  noble  beauty  that  was  theirs  when  first  they 
came  from  the  hand  of  the  master.  But  I  cannot 
work  this  miracle.  Can  those  other  uninspired  visi- 
tors do  it,  or  do  they  only  happily  imagine  they  do  ? 

After  reading  so  much  about  it,  I  am  satisfied  that 
the ' ' Last  Supper' '  was  a  very  miracle  of  art  once.  But 
it  was  three  hundred  years  ago. 

It  vexes  me  to  hear  people  talk  so  glibly  of  "feel- 
ing," "expression,"  "tone,"  and  those  other  easily 
acquired  and  inexpensive  technicalities  of  art  that 
make  such  a  fine  show  in  conversations  concerning 
pictures.  There  is  not  one  man  in  seventy-five 
hundred  that  can  tell  what  a  pictured  face  is  intended 
to  express.  There  is  not  one  man  in  five  hundred 
that  can  go  into  a  court-room  and  be  sure  that  he 
will  not  mistake  some  harmless  innocent  of  a  jury- 
man for  the  black-hearted  assassin  on  trial.  Yet 
such  people  talk  of  "character"  and  presume  to 
interpret  "expression"  in  pictures.  There  is  an  old 
story  that  Matthews,  the  actor,  was  once  lauding 
the  ability  of  the  human  face  to  express  the  passions 
and  emotions  hidden  in  the  breast.  He  said  the 
countenance  could  disclose  what  was  passing  in  the 
heart  plainer  than  the  tongue  could. 

"Now,"  he  said,  "observe  my  face — what  does 
it  express?" 

Ip2 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"Despair!" 

"Bah,   it  expresses  peaceful  resignation!    What 
does  this  express?" 
"Rage!" 

"Stuff!  it  means  terror!     This!" 
"Imbecility!" 
"Fool!     It  is  smothered  ferocity!     Now  this!" 

"Joy!" 

"Oh,  perdition!  Any  ass  can  see  it  means  in- 
sanity!" 

Expression!  People  coolly  pretend  to  read  it 
who  would  think  themselves  presumptuous  if  they 
pretended  to  interpret  the  hieroglyphics  on  the 
obelisk  of  Luxor — yet  they  are  fully  as  competent 
to  do  the  one  thing  as  the  other.  I  have  heard  two 
very  intelligent  critics  speak  of  Murillo's  "Immacu- 
late Conception"  (now  in  the  museum  at  Seville) 
within  the  past  few  days.     One  said: 

"Oh,  the  Virgin's  face  is  full  of  the  ecstasy  of  a 
joy  that  is  complete — that  leaves  nothing  more  to 
be  desired  on  earth!" 

The  other  said: 

"Ah,  that  wonderful  face  is  so  humble,  so  plead- 
ing— it  says  as  plainly  as  words  could  say  it:  'I 
fear;  I  tremble;  I  am  unworthy.  But  Thy  will  be 
done;  sustain  Thou  Thy  servant!'" 

The  reader  can  see  the  picture  in  any  drawing- 
room;  it  can  be  easily  recognized;  the  Virgin  (the 
only  young  and  really  beautiful  Virgin  that  was  ever 
painted  by  one  of  the  old  masters,  some  of  us  think) 
stands  in  the  crescent  of  the  new  moon,  with  a 
multitude  of  cherubs  hovering  about  her,  and  more 

193 


MARK    TWAIN 

coming;  her  hands  are  crossed  upon  her  breast,  and 
upon  her  uplifted  countenance  falls  a  glory  out  of 
the  heavens.  The  reader  may  amuse  himself,  if  he 
chooses,  in  trying  to  determine  which  of  these 
gentlemen  read  the  Virgin's  "expression"  aright,  or 
if  either  of  them  did  it. 

Any  one  who  is  acquainted  with  the  old  masters 
will  comprehend  how  much  the  "Last  Supper"  is 
damaged  when  I  say  that  the  spectator  cannot  really 
tell,  now,  whether  the  disciples  are  Hebrews  or 
Italians.  These  ancient  painters  never  succeeded 
in  denationalizing  themselves.  The  Italian  artists 
painted  Italian  Virgins,  the  Dutch  painted  Dutch 
Virgins,  the  Virgins  of  the  French  painters  were 
Frenchwomen — none  of  them  ever  put  into  the  face 
of  the  Madonna  that  indescribable  something  which 
proclaims  the  Jewess,  whether  you  find  her  in  New 
York,  in  Constantinople,  in  Paris,  Jerusalem,  or  in 
the  Empire  of  Morocco.  I  saw  in  the  Sandwich 
Islands,  once,  a  picture,  copied  by  a  talented  Ger- 
man artist  from  an  engraving  in  one  of  the  American 
illustrated  papers.  It  was  an  allegory,  representing 
Mr.  Davis  in  the  act  of  signing  a  secession  act  or 
some  such  document.  Over  him  hovered  the  ghost 
of  Washington  in  warning  attitude,  and  in  the  back- 
ground a  troop  of  shadowy  soldiers  in  Continental 
uniform  were  limping  with  shoeless,  bandaged  feet 
through  a  driving  snow-storm.  Valley  Forge  was 
suggested,  of  course.  The  copy  seemed  accurate, 
and  yet  there  was  a  discrepancy  somewhere.  After 
a  long  examination  I  discovered  what  it  was — the 
shadowy  soldiers  were  all  Germans!    Jeff  Davis  was 

IQ4. 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

a  German!  even  the  hovering  ghost  was  a  German 
ghost!  The  artist  had  unconsciously  worked  his 
nationality  into  the  picture.  To  tell  the  truth,  I 
am  getting  a  little  perplexed  about  John  the  Baptist 
and  his  portraits.  In  France  I  finally  grew  recon- 
ciled to  him  as  a  Frenchman ;  here  he  is  unquestion- 
ably an  Italian.  What  next?  Can  it  be  possible 
that  the  painters  make  John  the  Baptist  a  Spaniard 
in  Madrid  and  an  Irishman  in  Dublin? 

We  took  an  open  barouche  and  drove  two  miles 
out  of  Milan  to  "see  ze  echo,"  as  the  guide  ex- 
pressed it.  The  road  was  smooth,  it  was  bordered 
by  trees,  fields,  and  grassy  meadows,  and  the  soft 
air  was  filled  with  the  odor  of  flowers.  Troops  of 
picturesque  peasant-girls,  coming  from  work,  hooted 
at  us,  shouted  at  us,  made  all  manner  of  game  of 
us,  and  entirely  delighted  me.  My  long-cherished 
judgment  was  confirmed.  I  always  did  think  those 
frowsy,  romantic,  unwashed  peasant -girls  I  had  read 
so  much  about  in  poetry  were  a  glaring  fraud. 

We  enjoyed  our  jaunt.  It  was  an  exhilarating 
relief  from  tiresome  sight-seeing. 

We  distressed  ourselves  very  little  about  the 
astonishing  echo  the  guide  talked  so  much  about. 
We  were  growing  accustomed  to  encomiums  on 
wonders  that  too  often  proved  no  wonders  at  all. 
And  so  we  were  most  happily  disappointed  to  find 
in  the  sequel  that  the  guide  had  even  failed  to  rise  to 
the  magnitude  of  his  subject. 

We  arrived  at  a  tumble-down  old  rookery  called 
the  Palazzo  Simonetti — a  massive  hewn-stone  affair 
occupied  by  a  family  of  ragged  Italians.     A  good- 

i95 


MARK    TWAIN 

looking  young  girl  conducted  us  to  a  window  on 
the  second  floor  which  looked  out  on  a  court  walled 
on  three  sides  by  tall  buildings.  She  put  her  head 
out  at  the  window  and  shouted.  The  echo  answered 
more  times  than  we  could  count.  She  took  a  speak- 
ing-trumpet and  through  it  she  shouted,  sharp  and 
quick,  a  single 

"Ha!"     The  echo  answered: 

"Ha ha!  ! ha! ha!— ha!-ha!  ha! 

h-a-a-a-a-a!"  and  finally  went  off  into  a  rollicking 
convulsion  of  the  j oiliest  laughter  that  could  be 
imagined.  It  was  so  joyful,  so  long-continued,  so 
perfectly  cordial  and  hearty,  that  everybody  was 
forced  to  join  in.     There  was  no  resisting  it. 

Then  the  girl  took  a  gun  and  fired  it.  We  stood 
ready  to  count  the  astonishing  clatter  of  reverbera- 
tions. We  could  not  say  one,  two,  three,  fast 
enough,  but  we  could  dot  our  note-books  with  our 
pencil-points  almost  rapidly  enough  to  take  down  a 
sort  of  shorthand  report  of  the  result.  My  page 
revealed  the  following  account  I  could  not  keep 
up,  but  I  did  as  well  as  I  could. 

I  set  down  fifty-two  distinct  repetitions,  and  then 
the  echo  got  the  advantage  of  me.  The  doctor  set 
down  sixty-four,  and  thenceforth  the  echo  moved 
too  fast  for  him,  also.  After  the  separate  concus- 
sions could  no  longer  be  noted,  the  reverberations 
dwindled  to  a  wild,  long-sustained  clatter  of  sounds 
such  as  a  watchman's  rattle  produces.  It  is  likely 
that  this  is  the  most  remarkable  echo  in  the  world. 

The  doctor,  in  jest,  offered  to  kiss  the  young  girl, 
for  a  franc!    The  commonest  gallantry  compelled 

196 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

him  to  stand  by  his  offer,  and  so  he  paid  the  franc 
and  took  the  kiss.  She  was  a  philosopher.  She 
said  a  franc  was  a  good  thing  to  have,  and  she  did 
not  care  anything  for  one  paltry  kiss,  because  she 
had  a  million  left.  Then  our  comrade,  always  a 
shrewd  business  man,  offered  to  take  the  whole  cargo 
at  thirty  days,  but  that  little  financial  scheme  was  a 
failure. 


CHAPTER  XX 

WE  left  Milan  by  rail.  The  cathedral  six  or 
seven  miles  behind  us — vast,  dreamy,  bluish, 
snow-clad  mountains  twenty  miles  in  front  of  us, 
— these  were  the  accented  points  in  the  scenery. 
The  more  immediate  scenery  consisted  of  fields  and 
farmhouses  outside  the  car  and  a  monster-headed 
dwarf  and  a  mustached  woman  inside  it.  These 
latter  were  not  show-people.  Alas,  deformity  and 
female  beards  are  too  common  in  Italy  to  attract 
attention. 

We  passed  through  a  range  of  wild,  picturesque 
hills,  steep,  wooded,  cone-shaped,  with  rugged  crags 
projecting  here  and  there,  and  with  dwellings  and 
ruinous  castles  perched  away  up  toward  the  drifting 
clouds.  We  lunched  at  the  curious  old  town  of 
Como,  at  the  foot  of  the  lake,  and  then  took  the 
small  steamer  and  had  an  afternoon's  pleasure  ex- 
cursion to  this  place, — Bellagio. 

When  we  walked  ashore,  a  party  of  policemen 
(people  whose  cocked  hats  and  showy  uniforms 
would  shame  the  finest  uniform  in  the  military 
service  of  the  United  States)  put  us  into  a  little 
stone  cell  and  locked  us  in.  We  had  the  whole 
passenger-list  for  company,  but  their  room  would 
have  been  preferable,  for  there  was  no  light,  there 

198 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

were  no  windows,  no  ventilation.  It  was  close  and 
hot.  We  were  much  crowded.  It  was  the  Black 
Hole  of  Calcutta  on  a  small  scale.  Presently  a 
smoke  rose  about  our  feet — a  smoke  that  smelt  of 
all  the  dead  things  of  earth,  of  all  the  putrefaction 
and  corruption  imaginable. 

We  were  there  five  minutes,  and  when  we  got  out 
it  was  hard  to  tell  which  of  us  carried  the  vilest 
fragrance. 

These  miserable  outcasts  called  that  "fumi- 
gating" us,  and  the  term  was  a  tame  one,  indeed. 
They  fumigated  us  to  guard  themselves  against  the 
cholera,  though  we  hailed  from  no  infected  port. 
We  had  left  the  cholera  far  behind  us  all  the  time. 
However,  they  must  keep  epidemics  away  somehow 
or  other,  and  fumigation  is  cheaper  than  soap. 
They  must  either  wash  themselves  or  fumigate  other 
people.  Some  of  the  lower  classes  had  rather  die 
than  wash,  but  the  fumigation  of  strangers  causes 
them  no  pangs.  They  need  no  fumigation  them- 
selves. Their  habits  make  it  unnecessary.  They 
carry  their  preventive  with  them;  they  sweat  and 
fumigate  all  the  day  long.  I  trust  I  am  a  humble 
and  a  consistent  Christian.  I  try  to  do  what 
is  right.  I  know  it  is  my  duty  to  "pray  for  them 
that  despitefully  use  me";  and  therefore,  hard  as  it 
is,  I  shall  still  try  to  pray  for  these  fumigating, 
macaroni-stuffing  organ-grinders. 

Our  hotel  sits  at  the  water's  edge — at  least  its 
front  garden  does — and  we  walk  among  the  shrub- 
bery and  smoke  at  twilight;  we  look  afar  off  at 
Switzerland   and   the  Alps,   and   feel   an  indolent 

199 


MARK    TWAIN 

willingness  to  look  no  closer;  we  go  down  the  steps 
and  swim  in  the  lake;  we  take  a  shapely  little  boat 
and  sail  abroad  among  the  reflections  of  the  stars; 
lie  on  the  thwarts  and  listen  to  the  distant  laughter, 
the  singing,  the  soft  melody  of  flutes  and  guitars 
that  comes  floating  across  the  water  from  pleasuring 
gondolas;  we  close  the  evening  with  exasperating 
billiards  on  one  of  those  same  old  execrable  tables. 
A  midnight  luncheon  in  our  ample  bed-chamber;  a 
final  smoke  in  its  contracted  veranda  facing  the 
water,  the  gardens,  and  the  mountains;  a  summing 
up  of  the  day's  events.  Then  to  bed,  with  drowsy 
brains  harassed  with  a  mad  panorama  that  mixes  up 
pictures  of  France,  of  Italy,  of  the  ship,  of  the 
ocean,  of  home,  in  grotesque  and  bewildering  dis- 
order. Then  a  melting  away  of  familiar  faces,  of 
cities  and  of  tossing  waves,  into  a  great  calm  of 
forget  fulness  and  peace. 

After  which,  the  nightmare. 

Breakfast  in  the  morning,  and  then  the  lake. 

I  did  not  like  it  yesterday.  I  thought  Lake  Tahoe 
was  much  finer.  I  have  to  confess  now,  however, 
that  my  judgment  erred  somewhat,  though  not  ex- 
travagantly. I  always  had  an  idea  that  Como  was  a 
vast  basin  of  water,  like  Tahoe,  shut  in  by  great 
mountains.  Well,  the  border  of  huge  mountains  is 
here,  but  the  lake  itself  is  not  a  basin.  It  is  as 
crooked  as  any  brook,  and  only  from  one-quarter  to 
two- thirds  as  wide  as  the  Mississippi.  There  is  not 
a  yard  of  low  ground  on  either  side  of  it — nothing 
but  endless  chains  of  mountains  that  spring  abruptly 
from  the  water's  edge,  and  tower  to  altitudes  varying 

200 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

from  a  thousand  to  two  thousand  feet.  Their  craggy 
sides  are  clothed  with  vegetation,  and  white  specks 
of  houses  peep  out  from  the  luxuriant  foliage  every- 
where; they  are  even  perched  upon  jutting  and 
picturesque  pinnacles  a  thousand  feet  above  your 
head. 

Again,  for  miles  along  the  shores,  handsome 
country-seats  surrounded  by  gardens  and  groves, 
sit  fairly  in  the  water,  sometimes  in  nooks  carved  by 
Nature  out  of  the  vine-hung  precipices,  and  with  no 
ingress  or  egress  save  by  boats.  Some  have  great 
broad  stone  staircases  leading  down  to  the  water, 
with  heavy  stone  balustrades  ornamented  with 
statuary  and  fancifully  adorned  with  creeping  vines 
and  bright-colored  flowers — for  all  the  world  like  a 
drop-curtain  in  a  theater,  and  lacking  nothing  but 
long-waisted,  high-heeled  women  and  plumed  gal- 
lants in  silken  tights  coming  down  to  go  serenading 
in  the  splendid  gondo  a  in  waiting. 

A  great  feature  of  Como's  attractiveness  is  the 
multitude  of  pretty  houses  and  gardens  that  cluster 
upon  its  shores  and  on  its  mountainsides.  They 
look  so  snug  and  so  homelike,  and  at  eventide  when 
everything  seems  to  slumber,  and  the  music  of  the 
vesper-bells  comes  stealing  over  the  water,  one 
almost  believes  that  nowhere  else  than  on  the  Lake 
of  Como  can  there  be  found  such  a  paradise  of 
tranquil  repose. 

From  my  window  here  in  Bellagio,  I  have  a  view 
of  the  other  side  of  the  lake  now,  which  is  as  beau- 
tiful as  a  picture.  A  scarred  and  wrinkled  precipice 
rises  to  a  height  of  eighteen  hundred  feet;  on  a  tiny 

20I 


MARK    TWAIN 

bench  half-way  up  its  vast  wall,  sits  a  little  snow- 
flake  of  a  church,  no  bigger  than  a  martin-box,  ap- 
parently; skirting  the  base  of  the  cliff  are  a  hundred 
orange  groves  and  gardens,  flecked  with  glimpses  of 
the  white  dwellings  that  are  buried  in  them;  in 
front,  three  or  four  gondolas  lie  idle  upon  the  water 
— and  in  the  burnished  mirror  of  the  lake,  mountain, 
chapel,  houses,  groves,  and  boats  are  counterfeited 
so  brightly  and  so  clearly  that  one  scarce  knows 
where  the  reality  leaves  off  and  the  reflection  begins ! 

The  surroundings  of  this  picture  are  fine.  A 
mile  away,  a  grove-plumed  promontory  juts  far  into 
the  lake  and  glasses  its  palace  in  the  blue  depths;  in 
midstream  a  boat  is  cutting  the  shining  surface  and 
leaving  a  long  track  behind,  like  a  ray  of  light;  the 
mountains  beyond  are  veiled  in  a  dreamy  purple 
haze;  far  in  the  opposite  direction  a  tumbled  mass 
of  domes  and  verdant  slopes  and  valleys  bars  the 
lake,  and  here,  indeed,  does  distance  lend  enchant- 
ment to  the  view — for  on  this  broad  canvas,  sun  and 
clouds  and  the  richest  of  atmospheres  have  blended 
a  thousand  tints  together,  and  over  its  surface  the 
filmy  lights  and  shadows  drift,  hour  after  hour,  and 
glorify  it  with  a  beauty  that  seems  reflected  out  of 
Heaven  itself.  Beyond  all  question,  this  is  the  most 
voluptuous  scene  we  have  yet  looked  upon. 

Last  night  the  scenery  was  striking  and  pictu- 
resque. On  the  other  side  crags  and  trees  and  snowy 
houses  were  reflected  in  the  lake  with  a  wonderful 
distinctness,  and  streams  of  light  from  many  a  dis- 
tant window  shot  far  abroad  over  the  still  waters. 
On  this  side,  near  at  hand,  great  mansions,  white 

202 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

with  moonlight,  glared  out  from  the  midst  of  masses 
of  foliage  that  lay  black  and  shapeless  in  the  shad- 
ows that  fell  from  the  cliff  above — and  down  in  the 
margin  of  the  lake  every  feature  of  the  weird  vision 
was  faithfully  repeated. 

To-day  we  have  idled  through  a  wronder  of  a  gar- 
den attached  to  a  ducal  estate — but  enough  of  de- 
scription is  enough,  I  judge.  1  suspect  that  this  was 
the  same  place  the  gardener's  son  deceived  the  Lady 
of  Lyons  with,  but  I  do  not  know.  You  may  have 
heard  of  the  passage  somewhere: 

A  deep  vale, 
Shut  out  by  Alpine  hills  from  the  rude  world, 
Near  a  clear  lake  margined  by  fruits  of  gold 
And  whispering  myrtles: 
Glassing  softest  skies,  cloudless, 
Save  with  rare  and  roseate  shadows; 
A  palace,  lifting  to  eternal  heaven  its  marbled  walls, 
From  out  a  glossy  bower  of  coolest  foliage  musical 
with  birds. 

That  is  all  very  well,  except  the  "clear"  part  of 
the  lake.  It  certainly  is  clearer  than  a  great  many 
lakes,  but  how  dull  its  wraters  are  compared  with  the 
wonderful  transparence  of  Lake  Tahoe!  I  speak  of 
the  north  shore  of  Tahoe,  where  one  can  count  the 
scales  on  a  trout  at  a  depth  of  a  hundred  and  eighty 
feet.  I  have  tried  to  get  this  statement  off  at  par 
here,  but  with  no  success;  so  I  have  been  obliged 
to  negotiate  it  at  fifty  per  cent,  discount.  At  this 
rate  I  find  some  takers;  perhaps  the  reader  will 
receive  ;t  on  the  same  terms — ninety  feet  instead  of 
one  hundred  and  eighty.  But  let  it  be  remembered 
that   those   are   forced   terms — sheriffs-sale   prices. 

203 


MARK    TWAIN 

As  far  as  I  am  privately  concerned,  I  abate  not  a 
jot  of  the  original  assertion  that  in  those  strangely 
magnifying  waters  one  may  count  the  scales  on  a 
trout  (a  trout  of  the  large  kind)  at  a  depth  of  a 
hundred  and  eighty  feet — may  see  every  pebble  on 
the  bottom — might  even  count  a  paper  of  dray- 
pins.  People  talk  of  the  transparent  waters  of  the 
Mexican  Bay  of  Acapulco,  but  in  my  own  experience 
I  know  they  cannot  compare  with  those  I  am  speak- 
ing of.  I  have  fished  for  trout  in  Tahoe,  and  at  a 
measured  depth  of  eighty-four  feet  I  have  seen  them 
put  their  noses  to  the  bait  and  I  could  see  their 
gills  open  and  shut.  I  could  hardly  have  seen  the 
trout  themselves  at  that  distance  in  the  open  air. 

As  I  go  back  in  spirit  and  recall  that  noble  sea, 
reposing  among  the  snow-peaks  six  thousand  feet 
above  the  ocean,  the  conviction  comes  strong  upon 
me  again  that  Como  would  only  seem  a  bedizened 
little  courtier  in  that  august  presence. 

Sorrow  and  misfortune  overtake  the  legislature 
that  still  from  year  to  year  permits  Tahoe  to  retain 
its  unmusical  cognomen!  Tahoe!  It  suggests  no 
crystal  waters,  no  picturesque  shores,  no  sublimity. 
Tahoe  for  a  sea  in  the  clouds;  a  sea  that  has  char- 
acter, and  asserts  it  in  solemn  calms,  at  times,  at 
times  in  savage  storms;  a  sea,  whose  royal  seclusion 
is  guarded  by  a  cordon  of  sentinel  peaks  that  lift 
their  frosty  fronts  nine  thousand  feet  above  the  level 
world;  a  sea  whose  every  aspect  is  impressive, 
whose  belongings  are  all  beautiful,  whose  lonely 
majesty  types  the  Deity! 

Tahoe  means  grasshoppers.  It  means  grasshopper 
204 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

soup.  It  is  Indian,  and  suggestive  of  Indians.  They 
say  it  is  Pi-ute — possibly  it  is  Digger.  I  am  satis- 
fied it  was  named  by  the  Diggers — those  degraded 
savages  who  roast  their  dead  relatives,  then  mix  the 
human  grease  and  ashes  of  bones  with  tar,  and 
"gaum"  it  thick  all  over  their  heads  and  foreheads 
and  ears,  and  go  caterwauling  about  the  hills  and 
call  it  mourning.  These  are  the  gentry  that  named 
the  lake. 

People  say  that  Tahoe  means  "Silver  Lake" — 
' '  Limpid  Water ' '— ' '  Falling  Leaf. ' '  Bosh !  It  means 
grasshopper  soup,  the  favorite  dish  of  the  Digger 
tribe — and  of  the  Pi-utes  as  well.  It  isn't  worth 
while,  in  these  practical  times,  for  people  to  talk 
about  Indian  poetry — there  never  was  any  in  them 
— except  in  the  Fenimore  Cooper  Indians.  But  they 
are  an  extinct  tribe  that  never  existed.  I  know 
the  Noble  Red  Man.  I  have  camped  with  the  In- 
dians ;  I  have  been  on  the  war-path  with  them,  taken 
part  in  the  chase  with  them — for  grasshoppers; 
helped  them  steal  cattle;  I  have  roamed  with  them, 
scalped  them,  had  them  for  breakfast.  I  would 
gladly  eat  the  whole  race  if  I  had  a  chance. 

But  I  am  growing  unreliable.  I  will  return  to  my 
comparison  of  the  lakes.  Como  is  a  little  deeper  than 
Tahoe,  if  people  here  tell  the  truth.  They  say  it 
is  eighteen  hundred  feet  deep  at  this  point,  but  it 
does  not  look  a  dead  enough  blue  for  that.  Tahoe 
is  one  thousand  five  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet 
deep  in  the  center,  by  the  State  Geologist's  measure- 
ment. They  say  the  great  peak  opposite  this  town 
is  five  thousand  feet  high;  but  I  feel  sure  that  three 

203 


MARK    TWAIN 

thousand  feet  of  that  statement  is  a  good,  honest  He. 
The  lake  is  a  mile  wide  here,  and  maintains  about 
that  width  from  this  point  to  its  northern  extremity 
— which  is  distant  sixteen  miles;  from  here  to  its 
southern  extremity — say  fifteen  miles — it  is  not 
over  half  a  mile  wide  in  any  place,  I  should  think. 
Its  snow-clad  mountains  one  hears  so  much  about 
are  only  seen  occasionally,  and  then  in  the  distance, 
the  Alps.  Tahoe  is  from  ten  to  eighteen  miles  wide, 
and  its  mountains  shut  it  in  like  a  wall.  Their 
summits  are  never  free  from  snow  the  year  round. 
One  thing  about  it  is  very  strange :  it  never  has  even 
a  skim  of  ice  upon  its  surface,  although  lakes  in  the 
same  range  of  mountains,  lying  in  a  lower  and 
warmer  temperature,  freeze  over  in  winter. 

It  is  cheerful  to  meet  a  shipmate  in  these  out-of- 
the-way  places  and  compare  notes  with  him.  We 
have  found  one  of  ours  here — an  old  soldier  of  the 
war,  who  is  seeking  bloodless  adventures  and  rest 
from  his  campaigns,  in  these  sunny  lands.1 

1  Col.  J.  Heron  Foster,  editor  of  a  Pittsburg  journal,  and  a 
most  estimable  gentleman.  As  these  sheets  are  being  prepared  for 
the  press,  I  am  pained  to  learn  of  his  decease  shortly  after  his 
return  home. — M.  T. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

WE  voyaged  by  steamer  down  the  Lago  di 
Lecco,  through  wild  mountain  scenery,  and 
by  hamlets  and  villas,  and  disembarked  at  the  town 
of  Lecco.  They  said  it  was  two  hours,  by  carriage, 
to  the  ancient  city  of  Bergamo,  and  that  we  would 
arrive  there  in  good  season  for  the  railway-train. 
We  got  an  open  barouche  and  a  wild,  boisterous 
driver,  and  set  out.  It  was  delightful.  We  had  a 
fast  team  and  a  perfectly  smooth  road.  There  were 
towering  cliffs  on  our  left,  and  the  pretty  Lago  di 
Lecco  on  our  right,  and  every  now  and  then  it 
rained  on  us.  Just  before  starting,  the  driver  picked 
up,  in  the  street,  a  stump  of  a  cigar  an  inch  long, 
and  put  it  in  his  mouth.  When  he  had  carried  it 
thus  about  an  hour,  I  thought  it  would  be  only 
Christian  charity  to  give  him  a  light.  I  handed  him 
my  cigar,  which  I  had  just  lit,  and  he  put  it  in  his 
mouth  and  returned  his  stump  to  his  pocket!  I 
never  saw  a  more  sociable  man.  At  least  I  never 
saw  a  man  who  was  more  sociable  on  a  short  ac- 
quaintance. 

We  saw  interior  Italy  now.  The  houses  were  of 
solid  stone,  and  not  often  in  good  repair.  The 
peasants  and  their  children  were  idle,  as  a  general 
thing,  and  the  donkeys  and  chickens  made  them- 

207 


MARK    TWAIN 

selves  at  home  in  drawing-room  and  bed-chamber 
and  were  not  molested.  The  drivers  of  each  and 
every  one  of  the  slow-moving  market-carts  we  met 
were  stretched  in  the  sun  upon  their  merchandise, 
sound  asleep.  Every  three  or  four  hundred  yards, 
it  seemed  to  me,  we  came  upon  the  shrine  of  some 
saint  or  other — a  rude  picture  of  him  built  into  a 
huge  cross  or  a  stone  pillar  by  the  roadside.  Some 
of  the  pictures  of  the  Saviour  were  curiosities  in 
their  way.  They  represented  him  stretched  upon 
the  cross,  his  countenance  distorted  with  agony. 
From  the  wounds  of  the  crown  of  thorns;  from  the 
pierced  side;  from  the  mutilated  hands  and  feet; 
from  the  scourged  body — from  every  handbreadth 
of  his  person,  streams  of  blood  were  flowing!  Such 
a  gory,  ghastly  spectacle  would  frighten  the  children 
out  of  their  senses,  I  should  think.  There  were 
some  unique  auxiliaries  to  the  painting  which  added 
to  its  spirited  effect.  These  were  genuine  wooden 
and  iron  implements,  and  were  prominently  disposed 
round  about  the  figure:  a  bundle  of  nails;  the  ham- 
mer to  drive  them;  the  sponge;  the  reed  that  sup- 
ported it ;  the  cup  of  vinegar;  the  ladder  for  the  ascent 
of  the  cross;  the  spear  that  pierced  the  Saviour's 
side.  The  crown  of  thorns  was  made  of  real  thorns, 
and  was  nailed  to  the  sacred  head.  In  some  Italian 
church  paintings,  even  by  the  old  masters,  the  Sav- 
iour and  the  Virgin  wear  silver  or  gilded  crowns 
that  are  fastened  to  the  pictured  head  with  nails. 
The  effect  is  as  grotesque  as  it  is  incongruous. 

Here  and  there,  on  the  fronts  of  roadside  inns, 
we  found  huge,  coarse  frescoes  of  suffering  martyrs 

208 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

like  those  in  the  shrines.  It  could  not  have  dimin- 
ished their  sufferings  any  to  be  so  uncouthly  repre- 
sented. We  were  in  the  heart  and  home  of  priest- 
craft— of  a  happy,  cheerful,  contented  ignorance, 
superstition,  degradation,  poverty,  indolence,  and 
everlasting  unaspiring  worthlessness.  And  we  said 
fervently,  It  suits  these  people  precisely;  let  them 
enjoy  it,  along  with  the  other  animals,  and  Heaven 
forbid  that  they  be  molested.  We  feel  no  malice 
toward  these  fumigators. 

We  passed  through  the  strangest,  funniest,  un- 
dreamt-of old  towns,  wedded  to  the  customs  and 
steeped  in  the  dreams  of  the  elder  ages,  and  per- 
fectly unaware  that  the  world  turns  round!  And 
perfectly  indifferent,  too,  as  to  whether  it  turns 
round  or  stands  still.  They  have  nothing  to  do  but 
eat  and  sleep  and  sleep  and  eat,  and  toil  a  little 
when  they  can  get  a  friend  to  stand  by  and  keep 
them  awake.  They  are  not  paid  for  thinking — they 
are  not  paid  to  fret  about  the  world's  concerns. 
They  were  not  respectable  people — they  were  not 
worthy  people — they  were  not  learned  and  wise 
and  brilliant  people — but  in  their  breasts,  all  their 
stupid  lives  long,  resteth  a  peace  that  passeth  under- 
standing! How  can  men,  calling  themselves  men, 
consent  to  be  so  degraded  and  happy? 

We  whisked  by  many  a  gray  old  medieval  castle, 
clad  thick  with  ivy  that  swung  its  green  banners 
down  from  towers  and  turrets  where  once  some  old 
Crusader's  flag  had  floated.  The  driver  pointed  to 
one  of  these  ancient  fortresses,  and  said  (I  trans- 
late) : 

209 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Do  you  see  that  great  iron  hook  that  projects 
from  the  wall  just  under  the  highest  window  in  the 
ruined  tower?" 

We  said  we  could  not  see  it  at  such  a  distance, 
but  had  no  doubt  it  was  there. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "there  is  a  legend  connected 
with  that  iron  hook.  Nearly  seven  hundred  years 
ago,  that  castle  was  the  property  of  the  noble  Count 
Luigi  Gennaro  Guido  Alphonso  di  Genova — " 

"What  was  his  other  name?"  said  Dan. 

"He  had  no  other  name.  The  name  I  have 
spoken  was  all  the  name  he  had.  He  was  the  son 
of—  " 

"Poor  but  honest  parents — that  is  all  right — 
never  mind  the  particulars — go  on  with  the  legend." 

THE    LEGEND 

Well,  then,  all  the  world,  at  that  time,  was  in  a 
wild  excitement  about  the  Holy  Sepulcher.  All  the 
great  feudal  lords  in  Europe  were  pledging  their 
lands  and  pawning  their  plate  to  fit  out  men-at-arms 
so  that  they  might  join  the  grand  armies  of  Christen- 
dom and  win  renown  in  the  Holy  Wars.  The  Count 
Luigi  raised  money,  like  the  rest,  and  one  mild 
September  morning,  armed  with  battle-ax,  portcullis 
and  thundering  culverin,  he  rode  through  the  greaves 
and  bucklers  of  his  donjon-keep  with  as  gallant  a 
troop  of  Christian  bandits  as  ever  stepped  in  Italy. 
He  had  his  sword,  Excalibur,  with  him.  His  beau- 
tiful countess  and  her  young  daughter  waved  him 
a  tearful  adieu  from  the  battering-rams  and  but- 

210 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

cresses  of  the  fortress,  and  he  galloped  away  with  a 
happy  heart. 

He  made  a  raid  on  a  neighboring  baron  and  com- 
pleted his  outfit  with  the  booty  secured.  He  then 
razed  the  castle  to  the  ground,  massacred  the  family, 
and  moved  on.  They  were  hardy  fellows  in  the 
grand  old  days  of  chivalry.  Alas!  those  days  will 
never  come  again. 

Count  Luigi  grew  high  in  fame  in  Holy  Land. 
He  plunged  into  the  carnage  of  a  hundred  battles, 
but  his  good  Excalibur  always  brought  him  out 
alive,  albeit  often  sorely  wounded.  His  face  be- 
came browned  by  exposure  to  the  Syrian  sun  in 
long  marches;  he  suffered  hunger  and  thirst;  he 
pined  in  prisons,  he  languished  in  loathsome  plague- 
hospitals.  And  many  and  many  a  time  he  thought 
of  his  loved  ones  at  home,  and  wondered  if  all  was 
well  with  them.  But  his  heart  said,  Peace,  is  not 
thy  brother  watching  over  thy  household? 

Forty- two  years  waxed  and  waned;  the  good  fight 
was  won;  Godfrey  reigned  in  Jerusalem — the  Chris- 
tian hosts  reared  the  banner  of  the  cross  above  the 
Holy  Sepulcher! 

Twilight  was  approaching.  Fifty  harlequins,  in 
flowing  robes,  approached  this  castle  wearily,  for 
they  were  on  foot,  and  the  dust  upon  their  garments 
betokened  that  they  had  traveled  far.  They  over- 
took a  peasant,  and  asked  him  if  it  were  likely  they 
could  get  food  and  a  hospital  bed  there,  for  love 
of  Christian  charity,  and  if,  perchance,  a  moral 
parlor    entertainment    might    meet    with    generous 

211 


MARK    TWAIN 

countenance — "for,"  said  they,  "this  exhibition  hath 
no  feature  that  could  offend  the  most  fastidious 
taste." 

"Marry,"  quoth  the  peasant,  "an  it  please  your 
worships,  ye  had  better  journey  many  a  good  rood 
hence  with  your  juggling  circus  than  trust  your  bones 
in  yonder  castle." 

"How  now,  sirrah!"  exclaimed  the  chief  monk, 
"explain  thy  ribald  speech,  or  by'r  Lady  it  shall 
go  hard  with  thee." 

"Peace,  good  mountebank,  I  did  but  utter  the 
truth  that  was  in  my  heart.  San  Paolo  be  my  wit- 
ness that  did  ye  but  find  the  stout  Count  Leonardo 
in  his  cups,  sheer  from  the  castle's  topmost  battle- 
ments would  he  hurl  ye  all!  Alack-a-day!  the  good 
Lord  Luigi  reins  not  here  in  these  sad  times." 

"The  good  Lord  Luigi?" 

"Aye,  none  other,  please  your  worship.  In  his 
day,  the  poor  rejoiced  in  plenty  and  the  rich  he  did 
oppress;  taxes  were  not  known,  the  fathers  of  the 
church  waxed  fat  upon  his  bounty;  travelers  went 
and  came,  with  none  to  interfere;  and  whosoever 
would,  might  tarry  in  his  halls  in  cordial  welcome, 
and  eat  his  bread  and  drink  his  wine,  withal.  But 
woe  is  me!  some  two  and  forty  years  agone  the 
good  count  rode  hence  to  fight  for  Holy  Cross,  and 
many  a  year  hath  flown  since  word  or  token  have  we 
had  of  him.  Men  say  his  bones  lie  bleaching  in  the 
fields  of  Palestine." 

"And  now?" 

"  Now!  God  'a  mercy,  the  cruel  Leonardo  lords 
it  in  the  castle.     He  wrings  taxes  from  the  poor; 

2X2 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

he  robs  all  travelers  that  journey  by  his  gates;  h& 
spends  his  days  in  feuds  and  murders,  and  his  nights 
in  revel  and  debauch;  he  roasts  the  fathers  of  the 
church  upon  his  kitchen  spits,  and  enjoyeth  the 
same,  calling  it  pastime.  These  thirty  years  Luigi's 
countess  hath  not  been  seen  by  any  he  in  all  this 
land,  and  many  whisper  that  she  pines  in  the  dun- 
geons of  the  castle  for  that  she  will  not  wed  with 
Leonardo,  saying  her  dear  lord  still  liveth  and  that 
she  will  die  ere  she  prove  false  to  him.  They  whisper 
likewise  that  her  daughter  is  a  prisoner  as  well. 
Nay,  good  jugglers,  seek  ye  refreshment  other- 
wheres. 'Twere  better  that  ye  perished  in  a  Chris- 
tian way  than  that  ye  plunged  from  off  yon  dizzy 
tower.     Give  ye  good  day.' 

"God  keep  ye,  gentle  knave — farewell." 

But  heedless  of  the  peasant's  warning,  the  players 
moved  straightway  toward  the  castle. 

Word  was  brought  to  Count  Leonardo  that  a 
company  of  mountebanks  besought  his  hospitality. 

"'Tis  well.  Dispose  of  them  in  the  customary 
manner.  Yet  stay!  I  have  need  of  them.  Let 
them  come  hither.  Later,  cast  them  from  the 
battlements — or — how  many  priests  have  ye  on 
hand?" 

"The  day's  results  are  meager,  good  my  lord. 
An  abbot  and  a  dozen  beggarly  friars  is  all  we  have." 

"Hell  and  furies!  Is  the  estate  going  to  seed? 
Send  hither  the  mountebanks.  Afterward,  broil 
them  with  the  priests." 

The  robed  and  close-cowled  harlequins  entered. 
The  grim  Leonardo  sate  in  state  at  the  head  of  his 

213 


MARK    TWAIN 

council-board.  Ranged  up  and  down  the  hall  on 
either  hand  stood  near  a  hundred  men-at-arms. 

"Ha,  villains!"  quoth  the  count,  "What  can  ye 
do  to  earn  the  hospitality  ye  crave?" 

"Dread  lord  and  mighty,  crowded  audiences  have 
greeted  our  humble  efforts  with  rapturous  applause. 
Among  our  body  count  we  the  versatile  and  talented 
Ugolino;  the  justly  celebrated  Rodolpho;  the  gifted 
and  accomplished  Roderigo;  the  management  have 
spared  neither  pains  nor  expense — " 

"S' death!  what  can  ye  dot  Curb  thy  prating 
tongue." 

"Good  my  lord,  in  acrobatic  feats,  in  practice 
with  the  dumb-bells,  in  balancing  and  ground  and 
lofty  tumbling  are  we  versed — and  sith  your  high- 
ness asketh  me,  I  venture  here  to  publish  that  in  the 
truly  marvelous  and  entertaining  Zampillaerosta- 
tion— " 

"Gag  him!  throttle  him!  Body  of  Bacchus!  am 
I  a  dog  that  I  am  to  be  assailed  with  polysyllabled 
blasphemy  like  to  this  ?  But  hold !  Lucretia,  Isabel, 
stand  forth!  Sirrah,  behold  this  dame,  this  weep- 
ing wench.  The  first  I  marry,  within  the  hour;  the 
other  shall  dry  her  tears  or  feed  the  vultures.  Thou 
and  thy  vagabonds  shall  crown  the  wedding  with  thy 
merrymakings.     Fetch  hither  the  priest!" 

The  dame  sprang  toward  the  chief  player. 

"Oh,  save  me!"  she  cried;  "save  me  from  a 
fate  far  worse  than  death!  Behold  these  sad  eyes, 
these  sunken  cheeks,  this  withered  frame !  See  thou 
the  wreck  this  fiend  hath  made,  and  let  thy  heart  be 
moved  with  pity!     Look  upon  this  damosel;  note 

214 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

her  wasted  form,  her  halting  step,  her  bloomless 
cheeks  where  youth  shou'd  blush  and  happiness 
exult  in  smiles!  Hear  us,  and  have  compassion. 
This  monster  was  my  husband's  brother.  He  who 
should  have  been  our  shield  against  all  harm,  hath 
kept  us  shut  within  the  noisome  caverns  of  his 
donjon-keep  for,  lo,  these  thirty  years.  And  for 
what  crime?  None  other  than  that  I  would  not 
belie  my  troth,  root  out  my  strong  love  for  him  who 
marches  with  the  legions  of  the  cross  in  Holy  Land 
(for  oh,  he  is  not  dead),  and  wed  with  him!  Save 
us,  oh,  save  thy  persecuted  suppliants!" 

She  flung  herself  at  his  feet  and  clasped  his  knees. 

"Ha!  ha!  ha!"  shouted  the  brutal  Leonardo. 
"Priest,  to  thy  work!"  and  he  dragged  the  weeping 
dame  from  her  refuge.  "Say,  once  for  all,  will 
you  be  mine? — for  by  my  halidome,  that  breath 
that  uttereth  thy  refusal  shall  be  thy  last  on  earth  !n 

"Ne-ver!" 

"Then  die!"  and  the  sword  leaped  from  its  scab- 
bard. 

Quicker  than  thought,  quicker  than  the  lightning's 
flash,  fifty  monkish  habits  disappeared,  and  fifty 
knights  in  splendid  armor  stood  revealed!  fifty 
falchions  gleamed  in  air  above  the  men-at-arms,  and 
brighter,  fiercer  than  them  all,  flamed  Excalibur 
aloft,  and  cleaving  downward  struck  the  brutal 
Leonardo's  weapon  from  his  grasp ! 

"A  Luigi  to  the  rescue!     Whoop!" 

"A  Leonardo!  tare  an  ouns!" 

"Oh,  God,  oh,  God,  my  husband!" 

"Oh,  God,  oh,  God,  my  wife!" 
2iS 


MARK    TWAIN 

"My  father!" 

"My  precious!"     [Tableau.] 

Count  Luigi  bound  his  usurping  brother  hand  and 
foot.  The  practised  knights  from  Palestine  made 
holiday  sport  of  carving  the  awkward  men-at-arms 
into  chops  and  steaks.  The  victory  was  complete. 
Happiness  reigned.  The  knights  all  married  the 
daughter.     Joy!  wassail!  finis! 

"But  what  did  they  do  with  the  wicked  brother?" 

"Oh,  nothing — only  hanged  him  on  that  iron 
hook  I  was  speaking  of.     By  the  chin." 

"As  how?" 

"Passed  it  up  through  his  gills  into  his  mouth." 

"Leave  him  there?" 

"Couple  of  years." 

"Ah— is— is  he  dead?" 

"Six  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  or  such  a 
matter." 

"Splendid  legend — splendid  lie — drive  on." 

We  reached  the  quaint  old  fortified  city  of  Ber- 
gamo, the  renowned  in  history,  some  three-quarters 
of  an  hour  before  the  train  was  ready  to  start.  The 
place  has  thirty  or  forty  thousand  inhabitants  and  is 
remarkable  for  being  the  birthplace  of  harlequin. 
When  we  discovered  that,  that  legend  of  our  driver 
took  to  itself  a  new  interest  in  our  eyes. 

Rested  and  refreshed,  we  took  the  rail  happy  and 
contented.  I  shall  not  tarry  to  speak  of  the  hand- 
some Lago  di  Garda;  its  stately  castle  that  holds  in 
its  stony  bosom  the  secrets  of  an  age  so  remote  that 
even  tradition  goeth  not  back  to  it;  the  imposing 
mountain  scenery  that  ennobles  the  landscape  there- 

216 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

abouts ;  nor  yet  of  ancient  Padua  or  haughty  Verona ; 
nor  of  their  Montagues  and  Capulets,  their  famous 
balconies  and  tombs  of  Juliet  and  Romeo  et  al., 
but  hurry  straight  to  the  ancient  city  of  the  sea, 
the  widowed  bride  of  the  Adriatic.  It  was  a  long, 
long  ride.  But  toward  evening,  as  we  sat  silent 
and  hardly  conscious  of  where  we  were — subdued 
into  that  meditative  calm  that  comes  so  surely  after 
a  conversational  storm — some  one  shouted: 

"Venice!" 

And  sure  enough,  afloat  on  the  placid  sea  a  league 
away,  lay  a  great  city,  with  its  towers  and  domes 
and  steeples  drowsing  in  a  golden  mist  of  sunset. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

I^HIS  Venice,  which  was  a  haughty,  invincible, 
magnificent  Republic  for  nearly  fourteen  hun- 
dred years;  whose  armies  compelled  the  world's  ap- 
plause whenever  and  wherever  they  battled;  whose 
navies  well  nigh  held  dominion  of  the  seas,  and 
whose  merchant  fleets  whitened  the  remotest  oceans 
with  their  sails  and  loaded  these  piers  with  the  prod- 
ucts of  every  clime,  is  fallen  a  prey  to  poverty, 
neglect  and  melancholy  decay.  Six  hundred  years 
ago,  Venice  was  the  Autocrat  of  Commerce;  her 
mart  was  the  great  commercial  center,  the  distrib- 
uting-house from  whence  the  enormous  trade  of  the 
Orient  was  spread  abroad  over  the  Western  world. 
To-day  her  piers  are  deserted,  her  warehouses  are 
empty,  her  merchant  fleets  are  vanished,  her  armies 
and  her  navies  are  but  memories.  Her  glory  is  de- 
parted, and  with  her  crumbling  grandeur  of  wharves 
and  palaces  about  her  she  sits  among  her  stagnant 
lagoons,  forlorn  and  beggared,  forgotten  of  the 
world.  She,  that  in  her  palmy  days  commanded  the 
commerce  of  a  hemisphere  and  made  the  weal  or 
woe  of  nations  with  a  beck  of  her  puissant  finger,  is 
become  the  humblest  among  the  peoples  of  the 
earth, — a  peddler  of  glass  beads  for  women,  and 
trifling  toys  and  trinkets  for  school-girls  and  children. 

2T* 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

The  venerable  Mother  of  the  Republics  is  scarce  a 
fit  subject  for  flippant  speech  or  the  idle  gossiping 
of  tourists.  It  seems  a  sort  of  sacrilege  to  disturb 
the  glamour  of  old  romance  that  pictures  her  to 
us  softly  from  afar  off  as  through  a  tinted  mist,  and 
curtains  her  ruin  and  her  desolation  from  our  view. 
One  ought,  indeed,  to  turn  away  from  her  rags,  her 
poverty,  and  her  humiliation,  and  think  of  her  only 
as  she  was  when  she  sunk  the  fleets  of  Charlemagne ; 
when  she  humbled  Frederick  Barbarossa  or  waved 
her  victorious  banners  above  the  battlements  of 
Constantinople. 

We  reached  Venice  at  eight  in  the  evening,  and 
entered  a  hearse  belonging  to  the  Grand  Hotel 
d'Europe.  At  any  rate,  it  was  more  like  a  hearse 
than  anything  else,  though,  to  speak  by  the  card,  it 
was  a  gondola.  And  this  was  the  storied  gondola 
of  Venice! — the  fairy  boat  in  which  the  princely 
cavaliers  of  the  olden  time  were  wont  to  cleave  the 
waters  of  the  moonlit  canals  and  look  the  eloquence 
of  love  into  the  soft  eyes  of  patrician  beauties,  while 
the  gay  gondolier  in  silken  doublet  touched  his 
guitar  and  sang  as  only  gondoliers  can  sing!  This 
the  famed  gondola  and  this  the  gorgeous  gondolier! 
— the  one  an  inky,  rusty  old  canoe  with  a  sable 
hearse-body  clapped  on  to  the  middle  of  it,  and  the 
other  a  mangy,  barefooted  gutter-snipe  with  a  por- 
tion of  his  raiment  on  exhibition  which  should  have 
been  sacred  from  public  scrutiny.  Presently,  as  he 
turned  a  corner  and  shot  his  hearse  into  a  dismal 
ditch  between  two  long  rows  of  towering,  untenanted 
buildings,  the  gay  gondolier  began  to  sing,  true  to 

219 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  traditions  of  his  race.  I  stood  it  a  little  while. 
Then  I  said: 

"Now,  here,  Roderigo  Gonzales  Michael  Angelo, 
I'm  a  pilgrim,  and  I'm  a  stranger,  but  I  am  not 
going  to  have  my  feelings  lacerated  by  any  such 
caterwauling  as  that.  If  that  goes  on,  one  of 
us  has  got  to  take  water.  It  is  enough  that  my 
cherished  dreams  of  Venice  have  been  blighted  for- 
ever as  to  the  romantic  gondola  and  the  gorgeous 
gondolier;  this  system  of  destruction  shall  go  no 
farther;  I  will  accept  the  hearse,  under  protest,  and 
you  may  fly  your  flag  of  truce  in  peace,  but  here  I 
register  a  dark  and  bloody  oath  that  you  sha'n't  sing. 
Another  yelp,  and  overboard  you  go." 

I  began  to  feel  that  the  old  Venice  of  song  and 
story  had  departed  forever.  But  I  was  too  hasty. 
In  a  few  minutes  we  swept  gracefully  out  into  the 
Grand  Canal,  and  under  the  mellow  moonlight  the 
Venice  of  poetry  and  romance  stood  revealed. 
Right  from  the  water's  edge  rose  long  lines  of 
stately  palaces  of  marble;  gondolas  were  gliding 
swiftly  hither  and  thither  and  disappearing  suddenly 
through  unsuspected  gates  and  alleys;  ponderous 
stone  bridges  threw  their  shadows  athwart  the  glit- 
tering waves.  There  was  life  and  motion  every- 
where, and  yet  everywhere  there  wTas  a  hush,  a 
stealthy  sort  of  stillness,  that  was  suggestive  of  secret 
enterprises  of  bravoes  and  of  lovers;  and,  clad  half 
in  moonbeams  and  half  in  mysterious  shadows,  the 
grim  old  mansions  of  the  Republic  seemed  to  have 
an  expression  about  them  of  having  an  eye  out  for 
just  such  enterprises  as  these  at  that  same  moment. 

220 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Music  came  floating  over  the  waters — Venice  was 
complete. 

It  was  a  beautiful  picture — very  soft  and  dreamy 
and  beautiful.  But  what  was  this  Venice  to  com- 
pare with  the  Venice  of  midnight  ?  Nothing.  There 
was  a  fete — a  grand  fete  in  honor  of  some  saint 
who  had  been  instrumental  in  checking  the  cholera 
three  hundred  years  ago,  and  all  Venice  was  abroad 
on  the  water.  It  was  no  common  affair,  for  the 
Venetians  did  not  know  how  soon  they  might  need 
the  saint's  services  again,  now  that  the  cholera  was 
spreading  everywhere.  So  in  one  vast  space — say 
a  third  of  a  mile  wide  and  two  miles  long — were 
collected  two  thousand  gondolas,  and  every  one  of 
them  had  from  two  to  ten,  twenty,  and  even  thirty 
colored  lanterns  suspended  about  it,  and  from  four 
to  a  dozen  occupants.  Just  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
reach,  these  painted  lights  were  massed  together — 
like  a  vast  garden  of  many-colored  flowers,  except 
that  these  blossoms  were  never  still;  they  were 
ceaselessly  gliding  in  and  out,  and  mingling  to- 
gether, and  seducing  you  into  bewildering  attempts 
to  follow  their  mazy  evolutions.  Here  and  there  a 
strong  red,  green,  or  blue  glare  from  a  rocket  that 
was  struggling  to  get  away  splendidly  illuminated  all 
the  boats  around  it.  Every  gondola  that  swam  by 
us,  with  its  crescents  and  pyramids  and  circles  of 
colored  lamps  hung  aloft,  and  lighting  up  the  faces 
of  the  young  and  the  sweet-scented  and  lovely 
below,  was  a  picture;  and  the  reflections  of  those 
lights,  so  long,  so  slender,  so  numberless,  so  many- 
colored  and  so  distorted  and  wrinkled  by  the  waves, 

221 


MARK    TWAIN 

was  a  picture  likewise,  and  one  that  was  enchantingly 
beautiful.  Many  and  many  a  party  of  young  ladies 
and  gentlemen  had  their  state  gondolas  handsomely 
decorated,  and  ate  supper  on  board,  bringing  their 
s  wallow- tailed,  white-era  vat  ted  varlets  to  wait  upon 
them,  and  having  their  tables  tricked  out  as  if  for  a 
bridal  supper.  They  had  brought  along  the  costly 
globe  lamps  from  their  drawing-rooms,  and  the  lace 
and  silken  curtains  from  the  same  places,  I  suppose. 
And  they  had  also  brought  pianos  and  guitars,  and 
they  played  and  sang  operas,  while  the  plebeian 
paper-lanterned  gondolas  from  the  suburbs  and  the 
back  alleys  crowded  around  to  stare  and  listen. 

There  was  music  everywhere — choruses,  string- 
bands,  brass-bands,  flutes,  everything.  I  was  so 
surrounded,  walled  in  with  music,  magnificence,  and 
loveliness,  that  I  became  inspired  with  the  spirit  of 
the  scene,  and  sang  one  tune  myself.  However, 
when  I  observed  that  the  other  gondolas  had  sailed 
away,  and  my  gondolier  was  preparing  to  go  over- 
board, I  stopped. 

The  fete  was  magnificent.  They  kept  it  up  the 
whole  night  long,  and  I  never  enjoyed  myself  better 
than  I  did  while  it  lasted. 

What  a  funny  old  city  this  Queen  of  the  Adriatic 
is!  Narrow  streets,  vast,  gloomy  marble  palaces, 
black  with  the  corroding  damps  of  centuries,  and  all 
partly  submerged;  no  dry  land  visible  anywhere, 
and  no  sidewalks  worth  mentioning;  if  you  want  to 
go  to  church,  to  the  theater,  or  to  the  restaurant, 
you  must  call  a  gondola.  It  must  be  a  paradise  for 
cripples,  for  verily  a  man  has  no  use  for  legs  here. 

222 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

For  a  day  or  two  the  place  looked  so  like  an 
overflowed  Arkansas  town,  because  of  its  currentless 
waters  laving  the  very  doorsteps  of  all  the  houses, 
and  the  cluster  of  boats  made  fast  under  the  win- 
dows, or  skimming  in  and  out  of  the  alleys  and  by- 
ways, that  I  could  not  get  rid  of  the  impression  that 
there  was  nothing  the  matter  here  but  a  spring 
freshet,  and  that  the  river  would  fall  in  a  few  weeks 
and  leave  a  dirty  high-water  mark  on  the  houses, 
and  the  streets  full  of  mud  and  rubbish. 

In  the  glare  of  day,  there  is  little  poetry  about 
Venice,  but  under  the  charitable  moon  her  stained 
palaces  are  white  again,  their  battered  sculptures  are 
hidden  in  shadows,  and  the  old  city  seems  crowned 
once  more  with  the  grandeur  that  was  hers  five  hun- 
dred years  ago.  It  is  easy,  then,  in  fancy,  to  people 
these  silent  canals  with  plumed  gallants  and  fair 
ladies — with  Shy  locks  in  gaberdine  and  sandals, 
venturing  loans  upon  the  rich  argosies  of  Venetian 
commerce — with  Othellos  and  Desdemonas,  with 
Iagos  and  Roderigos — with  noble  fleets  and  victori- 
ous legions  returning  from  the  wars.  In  the  treach- 
erous sunlight  we  see  Venice  decayed,  forlorn, 
poverty-stricken,  and  commerceless — forgotten  and 
utterly  insignificant.  But  in  the  moonlight,  her 
fourteen  centuries  of  greatness  fling  their  glories 
about  her,  and  once  more  is  she  the  princeliest 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 

There   is   a   glorious   city   in   the   sea; 
The  sea  is  in  the  broad,  the  narrow  streets, 
Ebbing  and  flowing;  and  the  salt  seaweed 
Clings  to  the  marble  of  her  palaces. 
223 


MARK    TWAIN 

No  track  of  men,  no  footsteps  to  and  fro, 

Lead  to  her  gates!    The  path  lies  o'er  the  sea, 

Invisible:  and  from  the  land  we  went, 

As  to  a  floating  city — steering  in, 

And  gliding  up  her  streets,  as  in  a  dream, 

So  smoothly,  silently — by  many  a  dome, 

Mosque-like,  and  many  a  stately  portico, 

The  statues  ranged  along  an  azure  sky; 

By  many  a  pile,  in  more  than  Eastern  pride, 

Of  old  the  residence  of  merchant  kings; 

The  fronts  of  some,  tho'  time  had  shatter'd  them, 

Still  glowing  with  the  richest  hues  of  art, 

As  tho'  the  wealth  within  them  had  run  o'er. 

What  would  one  naturally  wish  to  see  first  in 
Venice?  The  Bridge  of  Sighs,  of  course — and  next 
the  Church  and  the  Great  Square  of  St.  Mark,  the 
Bronze  Horses,  and  the  famous  Lion  of  St.  Mark. 

We  intended  to  go  to  the  Bridge  of  Sighs,  but 
happened  into  the  Ducal  Palace  first — a  building 
which  necessarily  figures  largely  in  Venetian  poetry 
and  tradition.  In  the  Senate  Chamber  of  the  ancient 
Republic  we  wearied  our  eyes  with  staring  at  acres 
of  historical  paintings  by  Tintoretto  and  Paul 
Veronese,  but  nothing  struck  us  forcibly  except  the 
one  thing  that  strikes  all  strangers  forcibly — a 
black  square  in  the  midst  of  a  gallery  of  portraits. 
In  one  long  row,  around  the  great  hall,  were  painted 
the  portraits  of  the  doges  of  Venice  (venerable  fel- 
lows, with  flowing  white  beards,  for  of  the  three 
hundred  Senators  eligible  to  the  office,  the  oldest 
was  usually  chosen  doge),  and  each  had  its  compli- 
mentary inscription  attached — till  you  came  to  the 
place  that  should  have  had  Marino  Faliero's  picture 
in  it,  and  that  was  blank  and  black — blank,  except 

224 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

that  it  bore  a  terse  inscription,  saying  that  the  con- 
spirator had  died  for  his  crime.  It  seemed  cruel  to 
keep  that  pitiless  inscription  still  staring  from  the 
walls  after  the  unhappy  wretch  had  been  in  his  grave 
five  hundred  years. 

At  the  head  of  the  Giant's  Staircase,  where  Marino 
Faliero  was  beheaded,  and  where  the  doges  were 
crowned  in  ancient  times,  two  small  slits  in  the  stone 
wall  were  pointed  out — two  harmless,  insignificant 
orifices  that  would  never  attract  a  stranger's  atten- 
tion— yet  these  were  the  terrible  Lions'  Mouths! 
The  heads  were  gone  (knocked  off  by  the  French 
during  their  occupation  of  Venice),  but  these  were 
the  throats,  down  which  went  the  anonymous  accu- 
sation, thrust  in  secretly  at  dead  of  night  by  an 
enemy,  that  doomed  many  an  innocent  man  to  walk 
the  Bridge  of  Sighs  and  descend  into  the  dungeon 
which  none  entered  and  hoped  to  see  the  sun  again. 
This  was  in  the  old  days  when  the  Patricians  alone 
governed  Venice — the  common  herd  had  no  vote 
and  no  voice.  There  were  one  thousand  five  hun- 
dred Patricians;  from  these,  three  hundred  Senators 
were  chosen;  from  the  Senators  a  Doge  and  a 
Council  of  Ten  were  selected,  and  by  secret  ballot 
the  Ten  chose  from  their  own  number  a  Council  of 
Three.  All  these  were  government  spies,  then,  and 
every  spy  was  under  surveillance  himself — men 
spoke  in  whispers  in  Venice,  and  no  man  trusted  his 
neighbor — not  always  his  own  brother.  No  man 
knew  who  the  Council  of  Three  were — not  even 
the  Senate,  not  even  the  Doge;  the  members  of 
that  dread  tribunal  met  at  night  in  a  chamber  to 

225 


MARK    TWAIN 

themselves,  masked,  and  robed  from  head  to  foot  in 
scarlet  cloaks,  and  did  not  even  know  each  other, 
unless  by  voice.  It  was  their  duty  to  judge  heinous 
political  crimes,  and  from  their  sentence  there  was 
no  appeal.  A  nod  to  the  executioner  was  sufficient. 
The  doomed  man  was  marched  down  a  hall  and  out 
at  a  doorway  into  the  covered  Bridge  of  Sighs, 
through  it  and  into  the  dungeon  and  unto  his  death. 
At  no  time  in  his  transit  was  he  visible  to  any  save 
his  conductor.  If  a  man  had  an  enemy  in  those  old 
days,  the  cleverest  thing  he  could  do  was  to  slip  a 
note  for  the  Council  of  Three  into  the  Lion's  mouth, 
saying  "This  man  is  plotting  against  the  govern- 
ment." If  the  awful  Three  found  no  proof,  ten  to 
one  they  would  drown  him  anyhow,  because  he  was 
a  deep  rascal,  since  his  plots  were  unsolvable. 
Masked  judges  and  masked  executioners,  with  un- 
limited power,  and  no  appeal  from  their  judgments, 
in  that  hard,  cruel  age,  were  not  likely  to  be  lenient 
with  men  they  suspected  yet  could  not  convict. 

We  walked  through  the  hall  of  the  Council  of 
Ten,  and  presently  entered  the  infernal  den  of  the 
Council  of  Three. 

The  table  around  which  they  had  sat  was  there 
still,  and  likewise  the  stations  where  the  masked 
inquisitors  and  executioners  formerly  stood,  frozen, 
upright  and  silent,  till  they  received  a  bloody  order, 
and  then,  without  a  word,  moved  off,  like  the  inex- 
orable machines  they  were,  to  carry  it  out.  The 
frescoes  on  the  walls  were  startlingly  suited  to  the 
place.  In  all  the  other  salons,  the  halls,  the  great 
state  chambers  of  the  palace,  the  walls  and  ceilings 

226 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

were  bright  with  gilding,  rich  with  elaborate  carving, 
and  resplendent  with  gallant  pictures  of  Venetian 
victories  in  war,  and  Venetian  display  in  foreign 
courts,  and  hallowed  with  portraits  of  the  Virgin, 
the  Saviour  of  men,  and  the  holy  saints  that  preached 
the  Gospel  of  Peace  upon  earth — but  here,  in  dis- 
mal contrast,  were  none  but  pictures  of  death  and 
dreadful  suffering! — not  a  living  figure  but  was 
writhing  in  torture,  not  a  dead  one  but  was  smeared 
with  blood,  gashed  with  wounds,  and  distorted  with 
the  agonies  that  had  taken  away  its  life! 

From  the  palace  to  the  gloomy  prison  is  but  a 
step — one  might  almost  jump  across  the  narrow 
canal  that  intervenes.  The  ponderous  stone  Bridge 
of  Sighs  crosses  it  at  the  second  story — a  bridge 
that  is  a  covered  tunnel — you  cannot  be  seen  when 
you  walk  in  it.  It  is  partitioned  lengthwise,  and 
through  one  compartment  walked  such  as  bore  light 
sentences  in  ancient  times,  and  through  the  other 
marched  sadly  the  wretches  whom  the  Three  had 
doomed  to  lingering  misery  and  utter  oblivion  in 
the  dungeons,  or  to  sudden  and  mysterious  death. 
Down  below  the  level  of  the  water,  by  the  light  of 
smoking  torches,  we  were  shown  the  damp,  thick- 
walled  cells  where  many  a  proud  patrician's  life  was 
eaten  away  by  the  long-drawn  miseries  of  solitary 
imprisonment — without  light,  air,  books;  naked, 
unshaven,  uncombed,  covered  with  vermin;  his  use- 
less tongue  forgetting  its  office,  with  none  to  speak 
to;  the  days  and  nights  of  his  life  no  longer  marked, 
but  merged  into  one  eternal  eventless  night;  far 
away  from  all  cheerful  sounds,  buried  in  the  silence 

227 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  a  tomb;  forgotten  by  his  helpless  friends,  and 
his  fate  a  dark  mystery  to  them  forever;  losing  his 
own  memory  at  last,  and  knowing  no  more  who  he 
was  or  how  he  came  there;  devouring  the  loaf  of 
bread  and  drinking  the  water  that  were  thrust  into 
the  cell  by  unseen  hands,  and  troubling  his  worn 
spirit  no  more  with  hopes  and  fears  and  doubts  and 
longings  to  be  free;  ceasing  to  scratch  vain  prayers 
and  complainings  on  walls  where  none,  not  even 
himself,  could  see  them,  and  resigning  himself  to 
hopeless  apathy,  driveling  childishness,  lunacy! 
Many  and  many  a  sorrowful  story  like  this  these 
stony  walls  could  tell  if  they  could  but  speak. 

In  a  little  narrow  corridor,  near  by,  they  showed 
us  where  many  a  prisoner,  after  lying  in  the  dun- 
geons until  he  was  forgotten  by  all  save  his  perse- 
cutors, was  brought  by  masked  executioners  and 
garroted,  or  sewed  up  in  a  sack,  passed  through  a 
little  window  to  a  boat,  at  dead  of  night,  and  taken 
to  some  remote  spot  and  drowned. 

They  used  to  show  to  visitors  the  implements  of 
torture  wherewith  the  Three  were  wont  to  worm 
secrets  out  of  the  accused — villainous  machines  for 
crushing  thumbs;  the  stocks  where  a  prisoner  sat 
immovable  while  water  fell  drop  by  drop  upon  his 
head  till  the  torture  was  more  than  humanity  could 
bear;  and  a  devilish  contrivance  of  steel,  which  in- 
closed a  prisoner's  head  like  a  shell,  and  crushed  it 
slowly  by  means  of  a  screw.  It  bore  the  stains  of 
blood  that  had  trickled  through  its  joints  long  ago, 
and  on  one  side  it  had  a  projection  whereon  the  tor- 
turer rested  his  elbow  comfortably  and  bent  down 

228 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

his  ear  to  catch  the  moanings  of  the  sufferer  perish- 
ing within. 

Of  course,  we  went  to  see  the  venerable  relic  of 
the  ancient  glory  of  Venice,  with  its  pavements  worn 
and  broken  by  the  passing  feet  of  a  thousand  years 
of  plebeians  and  patricians — The  Cathedral  of  St. 
Mark.  It  is  built  entirely  of  precious  marbles, 
brought  from  the  Orient — nothing  in  its  composi- 
tion is  domestic.  Its  hoary  traditions  make  it  an 
object  of  absorbing  interest  to  even  the  most  careless 
stranger,  and  thus  far  it  had  interest  for  me;  but  no 
further.  I  could  not  go  into  ecstasies  over  its  coarse 
mosaics,  its  unlovely  Byzantine  architecture,  or  its 
five  hundred  curious  interior  columns  from  as  many 
distant  quarries.  Everything  was  worn  out — every 
block  of  stone  was  smooth  and  almost  shapeless 
with  the  polishing  hands  and  shoulders  of  loungers 
who  devoutly  idled  here  in  bygone  centuries  and 
have  died  and  gone  to  the  dev — no,  simply  died,  I 
mean. 

Under  the  altar  repose  the  ashes  of  St.  Mark — 
and  Matthew,  Luke,  and  John,  too,  for  all  I  know. 
Venice  reveres  those  relics  above  all  things  earthly. 
For  fourteen  hundred  years  St.  Mark  has  been  her 
patron  saint.  Everything  about  the  city  seems  to  be 
named  after  him  or  so  named  as  to  refer  to  him  in 
some  way — so  named,  or  some  purchase  rigged  in 
some  way  to  scrape  a  sort  of  hurrahing  acquaintance 
with  him.  That  seems  to  be  the  idea.  To  be  on 
good  terms  with  St.  Mark  seems  to  be  the  very 
summit  of  Venetian  ambition.  They  say  St.  Mark 
had  a  tame  lion,  and  used  to  travel  with  him — and 

229 


MARK    TWAIN 

everywhere  that  St.  Mark  went,  the  Hon  was  sure  to 
go.  It  was  his  protector,  his  friend,  his  iibrarian. 
And  so  the  Winged  Lion  of  St.  Mark,  with  the  open 
Bible  under  his  paw,  is  a  favorite  emblem  in  the 
grand  old  city.  It  casts  its  shadow  from  the  most 
ancient  pillar  in  Venice,  in  the  Grand  Square  of  St. 
Mark,  upon  the  throngs  of  free  citizens  below,  and 
has  so  done  for  many  a  long  century.  The  winged 
lion  is  found  everywhere — and  doubtless  here, 
where  the  winged  lion  is,  no  harm  can  come. 

St.  Mark  died  at  Alexandria,  in  Egypt.  He  was 
martyred,  I  think.  However,  that  has  nothing  to 
do  with  my  legend.  About  the  founding  of  the  city 
of  Venice — say  four  hundred  and  fifty  years  after 
Christ  (for  Venice  is  much  younger  than  any  other 
Italian  city) — a  priest  dreamed  that  an  angel  told 
him  that  until  the  remains  of  St.  Mark  were  brought 
to  Venice,  the  city  could  never  rise  to  high  distinc- 
tion among  the  nations;  that  the  body  must  be 
captured,  brought  to  the  city,  and  a  magnificent 
church  built  over  it;  and  that  if  ever  the  Venetians 
allowed  the  Saint  to  be  removed  from  his  new  rest- 
ing-place, in  that  day  Venice  would  perish  from  off 
the  face  of  the  earth.  The  priest  proclaimed  his 
dream,  and  forthwith  Venice  set  about  procuring  the 
corpse  of  St.  Mark.  One  expedition  after  another 
tried  and  failed,  but  the  project  was  never  abandoned 
during  four  hundred  years.  At  last  it  was  secured 
by  stratagem,  in  the  year  eight  hundred  and  some- 
thing. The  commander  of  a  Venetian  expedition 
disguised  himself,  stole  the  bones,  separated  them, 
and  packed  them  in  vessels  filled  with  lard.     The 

230 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

religion  of  Mohammed  causes  its  devotees  to  abhor 
anything  that  is  in  the  nature  of  pork,  and  so  when 
the  Christian  was  stopped  by  the  officers  at  the 
gates  of  the  city,  they  only  glanced  once  into  his 
precious  baskets,  then  turned  up  their  noses  at  the 
unholy  lard,  and  let  him  go.  The  bones  were  buried 
in  the  vaults  of  the  grand  cathedral,  which  had  been 
waiting  long  years  to  receive  them,  and  thus  the 
safety  and  the  greatness  of  Venice  were  secured. 
And  to  this  day  there  be  those  in  Venice  who  believe 
that  if  those  holy  ashes  were  stolen  away,  the  ancient 
city  would  vanish  like  a  dream,  and  its  foundations 
be  buried  forever  in  the  unremembering  sea. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE  Venetian  gondola  is  as  free  and  graceful,  in 
its  gliding  movement,  as  a  serpent.  It  is 
twenty  or  thirty  feet  long,  and  is  narrow  and  deep, 
like  a  canoe;  its  sharp  bow  and  stern  sweep  upward 
from  the  water  like  the  horns  of  a  crescent  with  the 
abruptness  of  the  curve  slightly  modified. 

The  bow  is  ornamented  with  a  steel  comb  with  a 
battle-ax  attachment  which  threatens  to  cut  passing 
boats  in  two  occasionally,  but  never  does.  The 
gondola  is  painted  black  because  in  the  zenith  of 
Venetian  magnificence  the  gondolas  became  too 
gorgeous  altogether,  and  the  Senate  decreed  that  all 
such  display  must  cease,  and  a  solemn,  unembel- 
lished  black  be  substituted.  If  the  truth  were 
known,  it  would  doubtless  appear  that  rich  plebeians 
grew  too  prominent  in  their  affectation  of  patrician 
show  on  the  Grand  Canal,  and  required  a  wholesome 
snubbing.  Reverence  for  the  hallowed  Past  and  its 
traditions  keeps  the  dismal  fashion  in  force  now  that 
the  compulsion  exists  no  longer.  So  let  it  remain. 
It  is  the  color  of  mourning.  Venice  mourns.  The 
stern  of  the  boat  is  decked  over  and  the  gondolier 
stands  there.  He  uses  a  single  oar — a  long  blade, 
of  course,  for  he  stands  nearly  erect.  A  wooden 
peg,  a  foot  and  a  half  high,  with  two  slight  crooks 

232 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

or  curves  in  one  side  of  it  and  one  in  the  other, 
projects  above  the  starboard  gunwale.  Against  that 
peg  the  gondolier  takes  a  purchase  with  his  oar, 
changing  it  at  intervals  to  the  other  side  of  the  peg 
or  dropping  it  into  another  of  the  crooks,  as  the 
steering  of  the  craft  may  demand — and  how  in  the 
world  he  can  back  and  fill,  shoot  straight  ahead,  or 
flirt  suddenly  around  a  corner,  and  make  the  oar 
stay  in  those  insignificant  notches,  is  a  problem  to 
me  and  a  never-diminishing  matter  of  interest.  I 
am  afraid  I  study  the  gondolier's  marvelous  skill 
more  than  I  do  the  sculptured  palaces  we  glide 
among.  He  cuts  a  corner  so  closely,  now  and  then, 
or  misses  another  gondola  by  such  an  imperceptible 
hair-breadth,  that  I  feel  myself  "scrooching,"  as  the 
children  say,  just  as  one  does  when  a  buggy-wheel 
grazes  his  elbow.  But  he  makes  all  his  calculations 
with  the  nicest  precision,  and  goes  darting  in  and 
out  among  a  Broadway  confusion  of  busy  craft  with 
the  easy  confidence  of  the  educated  hackman.  He 
never  makes  a  mistake. 

Sometimes  we  go  flying  down  the  great  canals  at 
such  a  gait  that  we  can  get  only  the  merest  glimpses 
into  front  doors,  and  again,  in  obscure  alleys  in  the 
suburbs,  we  put  on  a  solemnity  suited  to  the  silence, 
the  mildew,  the  stagnant  waters,  the  clinging  weeds, 
the  deserted  houses,  and  the  general  lifelessness 
of  the  place,  and  move  to  the  spirit  of  grave  medi- 
tation. 

The  gondolier  is  a  picturesque  rascal  for  all  he 
wears  no  satin  harness,  no  plumed  bonnet,  no  silken 
tights.     His  attitude  is  stately;  he  is  lithe  and  sup- 

233 


MARK    TWAIN 

pie;  all  his  movements  are  full  of  grace.  When  his 
long  canoe,  and  his  fine  figure,  towering  from  its 
high  perch  on  the  stern,  are  cut  against  the  evening 
sky,  they  make  a  picture  that  is  very  novel  and 
striking  to  a  foreign  eye. 

We  sit  in  the  cushioned  carriage-body  of  a  cabin, 
with  the  curtains  drawn,  and  smoke,  or  read,  or 
look  out  upon  the  passing  boats,  the  houses,  the 
bridges,  the  people,  and  enjoy  ourselves  much  more 
than  we  could  in  a  buggy  jolting  over  our  cobble- 
stone pavements  at  home.  This  is  the  gentlest, 
pleasantest  locomotion  we  have  ever  known. 

But  it  seems  queer — ever  so  queer — to  see  a 
boat  doing  duty  as  a  private  carriage.  We  see  busi- 
ness men  come  to  the  front  door,  step  into  a  gon- 
dola, instead  of  a  street-car,  and  go  off  down-town 
to  the  counting-room. 

We  see  visiting  young  ladies  stand  on  the  stoop, 
and  laugh,  and  kiss  good-by,  and  flirt  their  fans 
and  say  "Come  soon — now  do — you've  been  just 
as  mean  as  ever  you  can  be — mother's  dying  to  see 
you — and  we've  moved  into  the  new  house,  oh, 
such  a  love  of  a  place! — so  convenient  to  the  post- 
office  and  the  church,  and  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association;  and  we  do  have  such  fishing,  and 
such  carrying  on,  and  such  swimming  -  matches  in 
the  back  yard — Oh,  you  must  come — no  distance 
at  all,  and  if  you  go  down  through  by  St.  Mark's 
and  the  Bridge  of  Sighs,  and  cut  through  the  alley 
and  come  up  by  the  church  of  Santa  Maria  dei 
Frari,  and  into  the  Grand  Canal,  there  isn't  a  bit  of 
current — now  do  come,  Sally  Maria — by-by!"  and 

234 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

then  the  little  humbug  trips  down  the  steps,  jumps 
into  the  gondola,  says,  under  her  breath,  "  Disa- 
greeable old  thing,  I  hope  she  won't!"  goes  skim- 
ming away,  round  the  corner;  and  the  other  girl 
slams  the  street  door  and  says,  "Well,  ^^infliction's 
over,  anyway, — but  I  suppose  I've  got  to  go  and 
see  her — tiresome,  stuck-up  thing!"  Human  nature 
appears  to  be  just  the  same,  all  over  the  world. 
We  see  the  diffident  young  man,  mild  of  mustache, 
affluent  of  hair,  indigent  of  brain,  elegant  of  cos- 
tume, drive  up  to  her  father's  mansion,  tell  his 
hackman  to  bail  out  and  wait,  start  fearfully  up 
the  steps  and  meet  "the  old  gentleman"  right  on 
the  threshold! — hear  him  ask  what  street  the  new 
British  Bank  is  in — as  if  that  were  what  he  came 
for — and  then  bounce  into  his  boat  and  scurry 
away  with  his  coward  heart  in  his  boots! — see  him 
come  sneaking  around  the  corner  again,  directly, 
with  a  crack  of  the  curtain  open  toward  the  old 
gentleman's  disappearing  gondola,  and  out  scampers 
his  Susan  with  a  flock  of  little  Italian  endearments 
fluttering  from  her  lips,  and  goes  to  drive  with  him 
in  the  watery  avenues  down  toward  the  Rialto. 

We  see  the  ladies  go  out  shopping,  in  the  most 
natural  way,  and  flit  from  street  to  street  and  from 
store  to  store,  just  in  the  good  old  fashion,  except 
that  they  leave  the  gondola,  instead  of  a  private 
carriage,  waiting  at  the  curbstone  a  couple  of  hours 
for  them, — waiting  while  they  make  the  nice  young 
clerks  pull  down  tons  and  tons  of  silks  and  velvets 
and  moire  antiques  and  those  things;  and  then  they 
buy  a  paper  of  pins  and  go  paddling  away  to  confer 

235 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  rest  of  their  disastrous  patronage  on  some  other 
firm.  And  they  always  have  their  purchases  sent 
home  just  in  the  good  old  way.  Human  nature  is 
very  much  the  same  all  over  the  world;  and  it  is  so 
like  my  dear  native  home  to  see  a  Venetian  lady  go 
into  a  store  and  buy  ten  cents'  worth  of  blue  ribbon 
and  have  it  sent  home  in  a  scow.  Ah,  it  is  these 
little  touches  of  nature  that  move  one  to  tears  in 
these  far-off  foreign  lands. 

We  see  little  girls  and  boys  go  out  in  gondolas 
with  their  nurses,  for  an  airing.  We  see  staid 
families,  with  prayer-book  and  beads,  enter  the 
gondola  dressed  in  their  Sunday  best,  and  float 
away  to  church.  And  at  midnight  we  see  the 
theater  break  up  and  discharge  its  swarm  of  hilarious 
youth  and  beauty;  we  hear  the  cries  of  the  hack- 
man-gondoliers,  and  behold  the  struggling  crowd 
jump  aboard,  and  the  black  multitude  of  boats  go 
skimming  down  the  moonlit  avenues;  we  see  them 
separate  here  and  there,  and  disappear  up  divergent 
streets;  we  hear  the  faint  sounds  of  laughter  and  of 
shouted  farewells  floating  up  out  of  the  distance; 
and  then,  the  strange  pageant  being  gone,  we  have 
lonely  stretches  of  glittering  water — of  stately  build- 
ings— of  blotting  shadows — of  weird  stone  faces 
creeping  into  the  moonlight — of  deserted  bridges — 
of  motionless  boats  at  anchor.  And  over  all  broods 
that  mysterious  stillness,  that  stealthy  quiet,  that 
befits  so  well  this  old  dreaming  Venice. 

We  have  been  pretty  much  everywhere  in  our 
gondola.  We  have  bought  beads  and  photographs 
in  the  stores,  and  wax  matches  in  the  Great  Square 

236 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

of  St.  Mark.  The  last  remark  suggests  a  digression. 
Everybody  goes  to  this  vast  square  in  the  evening. 
The  military  bands  play  in  the  center  of  it  and 
countless  couples  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  promenade 
up  and  down  on  either  side,  and  platoons  of  them 
are  constantly  drifting  away  toward  the  old  cathe- 
dral, and  by  the  venerable  column  with  the  Winged 
Lion  of  St.  Mark  on  its  top,  and  out  to  where  the 
boats  lie  moored;  and  other  platoons  are  as  con- 
stantly arriving  from  the  gondolas  and  joining  the 
great  throng.  Between  the  promenaders  and  the 
sidewalks  are  seated  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  peo- 
ple at  small  tables,  smoking  and  taking  granita  (a 
first  cousin  to  ice-cream) ;  on  the  sidewalks  are  more 
employing  themselves  in  the  same  way.  The  shops 
in  the  first  floor  of  the  tall  rows  of  buildings  that  wall 
in  three  sides  of  the  square  are  brilliantly  lighted, 
the  air  is  filled  with  music  and  merry  voices,  and 
altogether  the  scene  is  as  bright  and  spirited  and  full 
of  cheerfulness  as  any  man  could  desire.  We  enjoy 
it  thoroughly.  Very  many  of  the  young  women  are 
exceedingly  pretty  and  dress  with  rare  good  taste. 
We  are  gradually  and  laboriously  learning  the  ill 
manners  of  staring  them  unflinchingly  in  the  face — 
not  because  such  conduct  is  agreeable  to  us,  but 
because  it  is  the  custom  of  the  country  and  they  say 
the  girls  like  it.  We  wish  to  learn  all  the  curious, 
outlandish  ways  of  all  the  different  countries,  so 
that  we  can  "show  off"  and  astonish  people  when 
we  get  home.  We  wish  to  excite  the  envy  of  our 
untraveled  friends  with  our  strange  foreign  fashions 
which  we  can't  shake  off.     All  our  passengers  are 

237 


MARK    TWAIN 

paying  strict  attention  to  this  thing,  with  the  end 
in  view  which  I  have  mentioned.  The  gentle  reader 
will  never,  never  know  what  a  consummate  ass  he 
can  become  until  he  goes  abroad.  I  speak  now,  of 
course,  in  the  supposition  that  the  gentle  reader  has 
not  been  abroad,  and  therefore  is  not  already  a 
consummate  ass.  If  the  case  be  otherwise,  I  beg 
his  pardon  and  extend  to  him  the  cordial  hand  of 
fellowship  and  call  him  brother.  I  shall  always 
delight  to  meet  an  ass  after  my  own  heart  when  I 
shall  have  finished  my  travels. 

On  this  subject  let  me  remark  that  there  are 
Americans  abroad  in  Italy  who  have  actually  for- 
gotten their  mother-tongue  in  three  months — forgot 
it  in  France.  They  cannot  even  write  their  address 
in  English  in  a  hotel-register.  I  append  these  evi- 
dences, which  I  copied  verbatim  from  the  register  of 
a  hotel  in  a  certain  Italian  city: 

John  P.  Whitcomb,  Etats  Unis. 

William  L.  Ainsworth,  travailleur  (he  meant  traveler,  I  sup- 
pose), Etats  Unis. 

George  P.  Morton  et  fils,  dJ  Amerique. 

Lloyd  B.  Williams,  et  trois  amis,  ville  de  Boston,  Amerique. 

J.  Ellsworth  Baker,  tout  de  suite  de  France,  place  de  naissance 
Amerique,  destination  la  Grande  Bretagne. 

I  love  this  sort  of  people.  A  lady  passenger  of 
ours  tells  of  a  fellow-citizen  of  hers  who  spent  eight 
weeks  in  Paris  and  then  returned  home  and  ad- 
dressed his  dearest  old  bosom  friend  Herbert  as  Mr. 
1 '  Er-bare !"  He  apologized,  though,  and  said,  ' '  Ton 
my  soul  it  is  aggravating,  but  I  cahn't  help  it — I 
have  got  so  used  to  speaking  nothing  but  French, 

238 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

my  dear  Erbare — damme  there  it  goes  again! — got 
so  used  to  French  pronunciation  that  I  cahn't  get 
rid  of  it — it  is  positively  annoying,  I  assure  you." 
This  enterprising  idiot,  whose  name  was  Gordon, 
allowed  himself  to  be  hailed  three  times  in  the 
street  before  he  paid  any  attention,  and  then  begged 
a  thousand  pardons  and  said  he  had  grown  so  ac- 
customed to  hearing  himself  addressed  as  "M'sieu 
Gor-r-efowg,"  with  a  roll  to  the  r,  that  he  had  forgotten 
the  legitimate  sound  of  his  name!  He  wore  a  rose 
in  his  buttonhole;  he  gave  the  French  salutation — 
two  flips  of  the  hand  in  front  of  the  face;  he  called 
Paris  Pairree  in  ordinary  English  conversation;  he 
carried  envelopes  bearing  foreign  postmarks  pro- 
truding from  his  breast  pocket ;  he  cultivated  a  mus- 
tache and  imperial,  and  did  what  else  he  could  to 
suggest  to  the  beholder  his  pet  fancy  that  he  re- 
sembled Louis  Napoleon — and  in  a  spirit  of  thank- 
fulness which  is  entirely  unaccountable,  considering 
the  slim  foundation  there  was  for  it,  he  praised  his 
Maker  that  he  was  as  he  was,  and  went  on  enjoying 
his  little  life  just  the  same  as  if  he  really  had  been 
deliberately  designed  and  erected  by  the  great 
Architect  of  the  Universe. 

Think  of  our  Whitcombs  and  our  Ainsworths  and 
our  Williamses  writing  themselves  down  in  dilapi- 
dated French  in  a  foreign  hotel -register!  We  laugh 
at  Englishmen,  when  we  are  at  home,  for  sticking 
so  sturdily  to  their  national  ways  and  customs,  but 
we  look  back  upon  it  from  abroad  very  forgivingly. 
It  is  not  pleasant  to  see  an  American  thrusting  his 
nationality  forward  obtrusively  in  a  foreign  land,  but 

239 


MARK    TWAIN 

oh,  it  is  pitiable  to  see  him  making  of  himself  a 
thing  that  is  neither  male  nor  female,  neither  fish, 
flesh,  nor  fowl — a  poor,  miserable,  hermaphrodite 
Frenchman ! 

Among  a  long  list  of  churches,  art-galleries,  and 
such  things,  visited  by  us  in  Venice,  I  shall  mention 
only  one — the  Church  of  Santa  Maria  dei  Frari. 
It  is  about  five  hundred  years  old,  I  believe,  and 
stands  on  twelve  hundred  thousand  piles.  In  it  lie 
the  body  of  Canova  and  the  heart  of  Titian,  under 
magnificent  monuments.  Titian  died  at  the  age  of 
almost  one  hundred  years.  A  plague  which  swept 
away  fifty  thousand  lives  was  raging  at  the  time,  and 
there  is  notable  evidence  of  the  reverence  in  which  the 
great  painter  was  held,  in  the  fact  that  to  him  alone 
the  state  permitted  a  public  funeral  in  all  that 
season  of  terror  and  death. 

In  this  church,  also,  is  a  monument  to  the  doge 
Foscari,  whose  name  a  once  resident  of  Venice, 
Lord  Byron,  has  made  permanently  famous. 

The  monument  to  the  doge  Giovanni  Pesaro,  in 
this  church,  is  a  curiosity  in  the  way  of  mortuary 
adornment.  It  is  eighty  feet  high  and  is  fronted 
like  some  fantastic  pagan  temple.  Against  it  stand 
four  colossal  Nubians,  as  black  as  night,  dressed  in 
white  marble  garments.  The  black  legs  are  bare, 
and  through  rents  in  sleeves  and  breeches,  the  skin, 
of  shiny  black  marble,  shows.  The  artist  was  as 
ingenious  as  his  funeral  designs  were  absurd.  There 
are  two  bronze  skeletons  bearing  scrolls,  and  two 
great  dragons  uphold  the  sarcophagus.  On  high, 
amid  all  this  grotesqueness,  sits  the  departed  doge. 

240 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

In  the  conventual  buildings  attached  to  this  church 
are  the  state  archives  of  Venice.  We  did  not  see 
them,  but  they  are  said  to  number  millions  of  docu- 
ments. "They  are  the  records  of  centuries  of  the 
most  watchful,  observant,  and  suspicious  government 
that  ever  existed — in  which  everything  was  written 
down  and  nothing  spoken  out."  They  fill  nearly 
three  hundred  rooms.  Among  them  are  manuscripts 
from  the  archives  of  nearly  two  thousand  families, 
monasteries,  and  convents.  The  secret  history  of 
Venice  for  a  thousand  years  is  here — its  plots,  its 
hidden  trials,  its  assassinations,  its  commissions  of 
hireling  spies  and  masked  bravoes — food,  ready  to 
hand,  for  a  world  of  dark  and  mysterious  romances. 

Yes,  I  think  we  have  seen  all  of  Venice.  We 
have  seen,  in  these  old  churches,  a  profusion  of 
costly  and  elaborate  sepulcher  ornamentation  such 
as  we  never  dreamt  of  before.  We  have  stood  in 
the  dim  religious  light  of  these  hoary  sanctuaries, 
in  the  midst  of  long  ranks  of  dusty  monuments  and 
effigies  of  the  great  dead  of  Venice,  until  we  seemed 
drifting  back,  back,  back,  into  the  solemn  past,  and 
looking  upon  the  scenes  and  mingling  with  the  peo- 
ples of  a  remote  antiquity.  We  have  been  in  a 
half -waking  sort  of  dream  all  the  time.  I  do  not 
know  how  else  to  describe  the  feeling.  A  part  of 
our  being  has  remained  still  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, while  another  part  of  it  has  seemed  in  some 
unaccountable  way  walking  among  the  phantoms  of 
the  tenth. 

We  have  seen  famous  pictures  until  our  eyes  are 
weary  with  looking  at  them  and  refuse  to  find  inter- 

241 


MARK    TWAIN 

est  in  them  any  longer.  And  what  wonder,  when 
there  are  twelve  hundred  pictures  by  Palma  the 
Younger  in  Venice  and  fifteen  hundred  by  Tinto- 
retto? And  behold,  there  are  Titians  and  the  works 
of  other  artists  in  proportion.  We  have  seen  Ti- 
tian's celebrated  "Cain  and  Abel,"  his  "David  and 
Goliah,"  his  "Abraham's  Sacrifice."  We  have  seen 
Tintoretto's  monster  picture,  which  is  seventy-four 
feet  long  and  I  do  not  know  how  many  feet  high, 
and  thought  it  a  very  commodious  picture.  We 
have  seen  pictures  of  martyrs  enough,  and  saints 
enough,  to  regenerate  the  world.  I  ought  not  to 
confess  it,  but  still,  since  one  has  no  opportunity  in 
America  to  acquire  a  critical  judgment  in  art,  and 
since  I  could  not  hope  to  become  educated  in  it  in 
Europe  in  a  few  short  weeks,  I  may  therefore  as 
well  acknowledge  with  such  apologies  as  may  be 
due,  that  to  me  it  seemed  that  when  I  had  seen  one 
of  these  martyrs  I  had  seen  them  all.  They  all  have 
a  marked  family  resemblance  to  each  other,  they 
dress  alike,  in  coarse  monkish  robes  and  sandals, 
they  are  all  bald-headed,  they  all  stand  in  about 
the  same  attitude,  and  without  exception  they  are 
gazing  heavenward  with  countenances  which  the 
Ainsworths,  the  Mortons,  and  the  Williamses,  et  fils, 
inform  me  are  full  of  "expression."  To  me  there 
is  nothing  tangible  about  these  imaginary  portraits, 
nothing  that  I  can  grasp  and  take  a  living  interest 
in.  If  great  Titian  had  only  been  gifted  with 
prophecy,  and  had  skipped  a  martyr,  and  gone  over 
to  England  and  painted  a  portrait  of  Shakespeare, 
even  as  a  youth,  which  we  could  all  have  confidence 

242 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

in  now,  the  world  down  to  the  latest  generations 
would  have  forgiven  the  lost  martyr  in  the  rescued 
seer.  I  think  posterity  could  have  spared  one  more 
martyr  for  the  sake  of  a  great  historical  picture 
of  Titian's  time  and  painted  by  his  brush — such 
as  Columbus  returning  in  chains  from  the  discovery 
of  a  world,  for  instance.  The  old  masters  did  paint 
some  Venetian  historical  pictures,  and  these  we  did 
not  tire  of  looking  at,  notwithstanding  representa- 
tions of  the  formal  introduction  of  defunct  Doges 
to  the  Virgin  Mary  in  regions  beyond  the  clouds 
clashed  rather  harshly  with  the  proprieties,  it 
seemed  to  us. 

But,  humble  as  we  are,  and  unpretending,  in  the 
matter  of  art,  our  researches  among  the  painted 
monks  and  martyrs  have  not  been  wholly  in  vain. 
We  have  striven  hard  to  learn.  We  have  had  some 
success.  We  have  mastered  some  things,  possibly 
of  trifling  import  in  the  eyes  of  the  learned,  but  to 
us  they  give  pleasure,  and  we  take  as  much  pride  in 
our  little  acquirements  as  do  others  who  have  learned 
far  more,  and  we  love  to  display  them  full  as  well. 
When  we  see  a  monk  going  about  with  a  lion  and 
looking  tranquilly  up  to  heaven,  we  know  that  that 
is  St.  Mark.  When  we  see  a  monk  with  a  book 
and  pen,  looking  tranquilly  up  to  heaven,  trying  to 
think  of  a  word,  we  know  that  that  is  St.  Matthew. 
When  we  see  a  monk  sitting  on  a  rock,  looking  tran- 
quilly up  to  heaven,  with  a  human  skull  beside  him, 
and  without  other  baggage,  we  know  that  that  is  St. 
Jerome  Because  we  know  that  he  always  went 
flying  light  in  the  matter  of  baggage.     When  we  see 

243 


MARK    TWAIN 

a  party  looking  tranquilly  up  to  heaven,  unconscious 
that  his  body  is  shot  through  and  through  with 
arrows,  we  know  that  that  is  St.  Sebastian.  When 
we  see  other  monks  looking  tranquilly  up  to  heaven, 
but  having  no  trade-mark,  we  always  ask  who  those 
parties  are.  We  do  this  because  we  humbly  wish  to 
learn.  We  have  seen  thirteen  thousand  St.  Jeromes, 
and  twenty-two  thousand  St.  Marks,  and  sixteen 
thousand  St.  Matthews,  and  sixty  thousand  St. 
Sebastians,  and  four  millions  of  assorted  monks, 
undesignated,  and  we  feel  encouraged  to  believe 
that  when  we  have  seen  some  more  of  these  various 
pictures,  and  had  a  larger  experience,  we  shall  begin 
to  take  an  absorbing  interest  in  them  like  our  culti- 
vated countrymen  from  Amerique. 

Now  it  does  give  me  real  pain  to  speak  in  this 
almost  unappreciative  way  of  the  old  masters  and 
their  martyrs,  because  good  friends  of  mine  in  the 
ship — friends  who  do  thoroughly  and  conscientiously 
appreciate  them  and  are  in  every  way  competent  to 
discriminate  between  good  pictures  and  inferior 
ones — have  urged  me  for  my  own  sake  not  to  make 
public  the  fact  that  I  lack  this  appreciation  and  this 
critical  discrimination  myself.  I  believe  that  what  I 
have  written  and  may  still  write  about  pictures  will 
give  them  pain,  and  I  am  honestly  sorry  for  it.  I 
even  promised  that  I  would  hide  my  uncouth  senti- 
ments in  my  own  breast.  But  alas!  I  never  could 
keep  a  promise.  I  do  not  blame  myself  for  this 
weakness,  because  the  fault  must  lie  in  my  physical 
organization.  It  is  likely  that  such  a  very  liberal 
amount   of  space  was   given   to   the  organ   which 

244 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

enables  me  to  make  promises,  that  the  organ  which 
should  enable  me  to  keep  them  was  crowded  out. 
But  I  grieve  not.  I  like  no  half-way  things.  I  had 
rather  have  one  faculty  nobly  developed  than  two 
faculties  of  mere  ordinary  capacity.  I  certainly 
meant  to  keep  that  promise,  but  I  find  I  cannot  do 
it.  It  is  impossible  to  travel  through  Italy  without 
speaking  of  pictures,  and  can  I  see  them  through 
other's  eyes? 

If  I  did  not  so  delight  in  the  grand  pictures  that 
are  spread  before  me  every  day  of  my  life  by  that 
monarch  of  all  the  old  masters,  Nature,  I  should 
come  to  believe,  sometimes,  that  I  had  in  me  no 
appreciation  of  the  beautiful,  whatsoever. 

It  seems  to  me  that  whenever  I  glory  to  think  that 
for  once  I  have  discovered  an  ancient  painting  that 
is  beautiful  and  worthy  of  all  praise,  the  pleasure  it 
gives  me  is  an  infallible  proof  that  it  is  not  a  beauti- 
ful picture  and  not  in  any  wise  worthy  of  commenda- 
tion. This  very  thing  has  occurred  more  times  than 
I  can  mention,  in  Venice.  In  every  single  instance 
the  guide  has  crushed  out  my  swelling  enthusiasm 
with  the  remark: 

"It  is  nothing — it  is  of  the  Renaissance." 
I  did  not  know  what  in  the  mischief  the  Renais- 
sance was,  and  so  always  I  had  to  simply  say: 
"Ah!  so  it  is — I  had  not  observed  it  before." 
I  could  not  bear  to  be  ignorant  before  a  cultivat- 
ed negro,  the  offspring  of  a  South  Carolina  slave. 
But  it  occurred  too  often  for  even  my  self-com- 
placency, did  that  exasperating  "It  is  nothing — it 
is  of  the  Renaissance."     I  said  at  last: 

245 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Who  is  this  Renaissance?  Where  did  he  come 
from?  Who  gave  him  permission  to  cram  the 
Republic  with  his  execrable  daubs?" 

We  learned,  then,  that  Renaissance  was  not  a 
man;  that  renaissance  was  a  term  used  to  signify 
what  was  at  best  but  an  imperfect  rejuvenation  of 
art.  The  guide  said  that  after  Titian's  time  and  the 
time  of  the  other  great  names  we  had  grown  so 
familiar  with,  high  art  declined;  then  it  partially- 
rose  again — an  inferior  sort  of  painters  sprang  up, 
and  these  shabby  pictures  were  the  work  of  their 
hands.  Then  I  said,  in  my  heat,  that  I  " wished  to 
goodness  high  art  had  declined  five  hundred  years 
sooner."  The  Renaissance  pictures  suit  me  very 
well,  though  sooth  to  say  its  school  were  too  much 
given  to  painting  real  men  and  did  not  indulge 
enough  in  martyrs. 

The  guide  I  have  spoken  of  is  the  only  one  we 
have  had  yet  who  knew  anything.  He  was  born  in 
South  Carolina,  of  slave  parents.  They  came  to 
Venice  while  he  was  an  infant.  He  has  grown  up 
here.  He  is  well  educated.  He  reads,  writes,  and 
speaks  English,  Italian,  Spanish,  and  French,  with 
perfect  facility;  is  a  worshiper  of  art  and  thoroughly 
conversant  with  it;  knows  the  history  of  Venice 
by  heart  and  never  tires  of  talking  of  her  illustrious 
career.  He  dressed  better  than  any  of  us,  I  think, 
and  is  daintily  polite.  Negroes  are  deemed  as  good 
as  white  people,  in  Venice,  and  so  this  man  feels  no 
desire  to  go  back  to  his  native  land.  His  judgment 
is  correct. 

I  have  had  another  shave.     I  was  writing  in  our 
246 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

front  room  this  afternoon  and  trying  hard  to  keep 
my  attention  on  my  work  and  refrain  from  looking 
out  upon  the  canal.  I  was  resisting  the  soft  in- 
fluences of  the  climate  as  well  as  I  could,  and  en- 
deavoring to  overcome  the  desire  to  be  indolent  and 
happy.  The  boys  sent  for  a  barber.  They  asked 
me  if  I  would  be  shaved.  I  reminded  them  of  my 
tortures  in  Genoa,  Milan,  Como;  of  my  declaration 
that  I  would  suffer  no  more  on  Italian  soil.  I  said: 
"Not  any  for  me,  if  you  please." 

I  wrote  on.  The  barber  began  on  the  doctor.  I 
heard  him  say: 

"Dan,  this  is  the  easiest  shave  I  have  had  since 
we  left  the  ship." 

He  said  again,  presently: 

"Why,  Dan,  a  man  could  go  to  sleep  with  this 
man  shaving  him." 

Dan  took  the  chair.     Then  he  said: 

"Why,  this  is  Titian.  This  is  one  of  the  old  mas- 
ters." 

I  wrote  on.     Directly  Dan  said: 

"Doctor,  it  is  a  perfect  luxury.  The  ship's  barber 
isn't  anything  to  him." 

My  rough  beard  was  distressing  me  beyond 
measure.  The  barber  was  rolling  up  his  ap- 
paratus. The  temptation  was  too  strong.  I 
said: 

"Hold  on,  please.     Shave  me  also." 

I  sat  down  in  the  chair  and  closed  my  eyes.  The 
barber  soaped  my  face,  and  then  took  his  razor  and 
gave  me  a  rake  that  well-nigh  threw  me  into  convul- 
sions.    I  jumped  out  of  the  chair:  Dan  and  the 

247 


MARK    TWAIN 

doctor  were  both  wiping  blood  off  their  faces  and 
laughing. 

I  said  it  was  a  mean,  disgraceful  fraud. 

They  said  that  the  misery  of  this  shave  had  gone 
so  far  beyond  anything  they  had  ever  experienced 
before,  that  they  could  not  bear  the  idea  of  losing 
such  a  chance  of  hearing  a  cordial  opinion  from  me 
on  the  subject. 

It  was  shameful.  But  there  was  no  help  for  it. 
The  skinning  was  begun  and  had  to  be  finished. 
The  tears  flowed  with  every  rake,  and  so  did  the 
fervent  execrations.  The  barber  grew  confused, 
and  brought  blood  every  time.  I  think  the  boys 
enjoyed  it  better  than  anything  they  have  seen  or 
heard  since  they  left  home. 

We  have  seen  the  Campanile,  and  Byron's  house, 
and  Balbi's  the  geographer,  and  the  palaces  of  all 
the  ancient  dukes  and  doges  of  Venice,  and  we  have 
seen  their  effeminate  descendants  airing  their  nobility 
in  fashionable  French  attire  in  the  Grand  Square  of 
St.  Mark,  and  eating  ices  and  drinking  cheap  wines, 
instead  of  wearing  gallant  coats  of  mail  and  destroy- 
ing fleets  and  armies  as  their  great  ancestors  did  in 
the  days  of  Venetian  glory.  We  have  seen  no 
bravoes  with  poisoned  stilettoes,  no  masks,  no  wild 
carnival;  but  we  have  seen  the  ancient  pride  of 
Venice,  the  grim  Bronze  Horses  that  figure  in  a 
thousand  legends.  Venice  may  well  cherish  them, 
for  they  are  the  only  horses  she  ever  had.  It  is 
said  there  are  hundreds  of  people  in  this  curious 
city  who  never  have  seen  a  living  horse  in  their  lives. 
It  is  entirely  true,  no  doubt. 

248 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

And  so,  having  satisfied  ourselves,  we  depart  to- 
morrow, and  leave  the  venerable  Queen  of  the  Re- 
publics to  summon  her  vanished  ships,  and  marshal 
her  shadowy  armies,  and  know  again  in  dreams  the 
pride  of  her  old  renown. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

SOME  of  the  Quaker  City's  passengers  had  ar- 
rived in  Venice  from  Switzerland  and  other 
lands  before  we  left  there,  and  others  were  expected 
every  day.  We  heard  of  no  casualties  among  them, 
and  no  sickness. 

We  were  a  little  fatigued  with  sight-seeing,  and  so 
we  rattled  through  a  good  deal  of  country  by  rail 
without  caring  to  stop.  I  took  few  notes.  I  find 
no  mention  of  Bologna  in  my  memorandum-book, 
except  that  we  arrived  there  in  good  season,  but 
saw  none  of  the  sausages  for  which  the  place  is  so 
justly  celebrated. 

Pistoia  awoke  but  a  passing  interest. 

Florence  pleased  us  for  a  while.  I  think  we  ap- 
preciated the  great  figure  of  David  in  the  grand 
square,  and  the  sculptured  group  they  call  the  Rape 
of  the  Sabines.  We  wandered  through  the  endless 
collections  of  paintings  and  statues  of  the  Pitti  and 
Uffizzi  galleries,  of  course.  I  make  that  statement 
in  self-defense;  there  let  it  stop.  I  could  not  rest 
under  the  imputation  that  I  visited  Florence  and  did 
not  traverse  its  weary  miles  of  picture-galleries.  We 
tried  indolently  to  recollect  something  about  the 
Guelphs  and  Ghibelines  and  the  other  historical  cut- 
throats whose  quarrels  and  assassinations  make  up 

250 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

so  large  a  share  of  Florentine  history,  but  the  sub- 
ject was  not  attractive.  We  had  been  robbed  of  all 
the  fine  mountain  scenery  on  our  little  journey  by  a 
system  of  railroading  that  had  three  miles  of  tunnel 
to  a  hundred  yards  of  daylight,  and  we  were  not 
inclined  to  be  sociable  with  Florence.  We  had  seen 
the  spot,  outside  the  city  somewhere,  where  these 
people  had  allowed  the  bones  of  Galileo  to  rest  in 
unconsecrated  ground  for  an  age  because  his  great 
discovery  that  the  world  turned  around  was  regarded 
as  a  damning  heresy  by  the  church;  and  we  know 
that  long  after  the  world  had  accepted  his  theory 
and  raised  his  name  high  in  the  list  of  its  great 
men,  they  had  still  let  him  rot  there.  That  we  had 
lived  to  see  his  dust  in  honored  sepulture  in  the 
Church  of  Santa  Croce  we  owed  to  a  society  of 
literati,  and  not  to  Florence  or  her  rulers.  We  saw 
Dante's  tomb  in  that  church,  also,  but  we  were  glad 
to  know  that  his  body  was  not  in  it;  that  the  un- 
grateful city  that  had  exiled  him  and  persecuted  him 
would  give  much  to  have  it  there,  but  need  not  hope 
to  ever  secure  that  high  honor  to  herself.  Medicis 
are  good  enough  for  Florence.  Let  her  plant  Medicis 
and  build  grand  monuments  over  them  to  testify 
how  gratefully  she  was  wont  to  lick  the  hand  that 
scourged  her. 

Magnanimous  Florence!  Her  jewelry  marts  are 
filled  with  artists  in  mosaic.  Florentine  mosaics 
are  the  choicest  in  all  the  world.  Florence  loves  to 
have  that  said.  Florence  is  proud  of  it.  Florence 
would  foster  this  specialty  of  hers.  She  is  grateful 
to  the  artists  that  bring  to  her  this  high  credit  and 

251 


MARK    TWAIN 

fill  her  coffers  with  foreign  money,  and  so  she  en- 
courages them  with  pensions.  With  pensions! 
Think  of  the  lavishness  of  it.  She  knows  that  peo- 
ple who  piece  together  the  beautiful  trifles  die  early, 
because  the  labor  is  so  confining,  and  so  exhausting 
to  hand  and  brain,  and  so  she  has  decreed  that  all 
these  people  who  reach  the  age  of  sixty  shall  have 
a  pension  after  that!  I  have  not  heard  that  any  of 
them  have  called  for  their  dividends  yet.  One  man 
did  fight  along  till  he  was  sixty,  and  started  after  his 
pension,  but  it  appeared  that  there  had  been  a  mis- 
take of  a  year  in  his  family  record,  and  so  he  gave 
it  up  and  died.  These  artists  will  take  particles  of 
stone  or  glass  no  larger  than  a  mustard  seed,  and 
piece  them  together  on  a  sleeve-button  or  a  shirt- 
stud,  so  smoothly  and  with  such  nice  adjustment  of 
the  delicate  shades  of  color  the  pieces  bear,  as  to 
form  a  pygmy  rose  with  stem,  thorn,  leaves,  petals 
complete,  and  all  as  softly  and  as  truthfully  tinted 
as  though  Nature  had  builded  it  herself.  They  will 
counterfeit  a  fly,  or  a  high-toned  bug,  or  the  ruined 
Coliseum,  within  the  cramped  circle  of  a  breastpin, 
and  do  it  so  deftly  and  so  neatly  that  any  man  might 
think  a  master  painted  it. 

I  saw  a  little  table  in  the  great  mosaic  school  in 
Florence — a  little  trifle  of  a  center-table — whose 
top  was  made  of  some  sort  of  precious  polished 
stone,  and  in  the  stone  was  inlaid  the  figure  of  a 
flute,  with  bell-mouth  and  a  mazy  complication  of 
keys.  No  painting  in  the  world  could  have  been 
softer  or  richer;  no  shading  out  of  one  tint  into  an- 
other could  have  been  more  perfect;  no  work  of  art 

252 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

of  any  kind  could  have  been  more  faultless  than 
this  flute,  and  yet  to  count  the  multitude  of  little 
fragments  of  stone  of  which  they  swore  it  was  formed 
would  bankrupt  any  man's  arithmetic!  I  do  not 
think  one  could  have  seen  where  two  particles  joined 
each  other  with  eyes  of  ordinary  shrewdness.  Cer- 
tainly we  could  detect  no  such  blemish.  This  table 
top  cost  the  labor  of  one  man  for  ten  long  years,  so 
they  said,  and  it  was  for  sale  for  thirty-five  thousand 
dollars. 

We  went  to  the  Church  of  Santa  Croce,  from  time 
to  time,  in  Florence,  to  weep  over  the  tombs  of 
Michael  Angelo,  Raphael,  and  Machiavelli  (I  sup- 
pose they  are  buried  there,  but  it  may  be  that  they 
reside  elsewhere  and  rent  their  tombs  to  other 
parties — such  being  the  fashion  in  Italy),  and  be- 
tween times  we  used  to  go  and  stand  on  the  bridges 
and  admire  the  Arno.  It  is  popular  to  admire  the 
Arno.  It  is  a  great  historical  creek  with  four  feet 
in  the  channel  and  some  scows  floating  around.  It 
would  be  a  very  plausible  river  if  they  would  pump 
some  water  into  it.  They  all  call  it  a  river,  and 
they  honestly  think  it  is  a  river,  do  these  dark  and 
bloody  Florentines.  They  even  help  out  the  delu- 
sion by  building  bridges  over  it.  I  do  not  see  why 
they  are  too  good  to  wade. 

How  the  fatigues  and  annoyances  of  travel  fill  one 
with  bitter  prejudices  sometimes!  I  might  enter 
Florence  under  happier  auspices  a  month  hence  and 
find  it  all  beautiful,  all  attractive.  But  I  do  not 
care  to  think  of  it  now,  at  all,  nor  of  its  roomy 
shops  filled  to  the  ceiling  with  snowy  marble  and 

253 


MARK    TWAIN 

alabaster  copies  of  all  the  celebrated  sculptures  in 
Europe — copies  so  enchanting  to  the  eye  that  I 
wonder  how  they  can  really  be  shaped  like  the  dingy 
petrified  nightmares  they  are  the  portraits  of.  I 
got  lost  in  Florence  at  nine  o'clock,  one  night,  and 
stayed  lost  in  that  labyrinth  of  narrow  streets  and 
long  rows  of  vast  buildings  that  look  all  alike,  until 
toward  three  o'clock  in  the  morning.  It  was  a 
pleasant  night  and  at  first  there  were  a  good  many 
people  abroad,  and  there  were  cheerful  lights  about. 
Later,  I  grew  accustomed  to  prowling  about  mys- 
terious drifts  and  tunnels  and  astonishing  and  inter- 
esting myself  with  coming  around  corners  expecting 
to  find  the  hotel  staring  me  in  the  face,  and  not  find- 
ing it  doing  anything  of  the  kind.  Later  still,  I  felt 
tired.  I  soon  felt  remarkably  tired.  But  there  was 
no  one  abroad,  now — not  even  a  policeman.  I 
walked  till  I  was  out  of  all  patience,  and  very  hot 
and  thirsty.  At  last,  somewhere  after  one  o'clock, 
I  came  unexpectedly  to  one  of  the  city  gates.  I 
knew  then  that  I  was  very  far  from  the  hotel.  The 
soldiers  thought  I  wanted  to  leave  the  city,  and  they 
sprang  up  and  barred  the  way  with  their  muskets. 
I  said: 

"Hotel  d'Europe!" 

It  was  all  the  Italian  I  knew,  and  I  was  not  certain 
whether  that  was  Italian  or  French.  The  soldiers 
looked  stupidly  at  each  other  and  at  me,  and  shook 
their  heads  and  took  me  into  custody.  I  said  I 
wanted  to  go  home.  They  did  not  understand  me. 
They  took  me  into  the  guardhouse  and  searched 
me,  but  they  found  no  sedition  on  me.     They  found 

254 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

a  small  piece  of  soap  (we  carry  soap  with  us  now)v 
and  I  made  them  a  present  of  it,  seeing  that  they 
regarded  it  as  a  curiosity.  I  continued  to  say  Hotel 
d 'Europe,  and  they  continued  to  shake  their  heads, 
until  at  last  a  young  soldier  nodding  in  the  corner 
roused  up  and  said  something.  He  said  he  knew 
where  the  hotel  was,  I  suppose,  for  the  officer  of 
the  guard  sent  him  away  with  me.  We  walked 
a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  it  appeared 
to  me,  and  then  he  got  lost.  He  turned  this  way 
and  that,  and  finally  gave  it  up  and  signified  that 
he  was  going  to  spend  the  remainder  of  the  morn- 
ing trying  to  find  the  city  gate  again.  At  that  mo- 
ment it  struck  me  that  there  was  something  fa- 
miliar about  the  house  over  the  way.  It  was  the 
hotel! 

It  was  a  happy  thing  for  me  that  there  happened 
to  be  a  soldier  there  that  knew  even  as  much  as  he 
did;  for  they  say  that  the  policy  of  the  government 
is  to  change  the  soldiery  from  one  place  to  another 
constantly  and  from  country  to  city,  so  that  they 
cannot  become  acquainted  with  the  people  and  grow 
lax  in  their  duties  and  enter  into  plots  and  con- 
spiracies with  friends.  My  experiences  of  Florence 
were  chiefly  unpleasant.     I  will  change  the  subject. 

At  Pisa  we  climbed  up  to  the  top  of  the  strangest 
structure  the  world  has  any  knowledge  of — the 
Leaning  Tower.  As  every  one  knows,  it  is  in  the 
neighborhood  of  one  hundred  and  eighty  feet  high 
— and  I  beg  to  observe  that  one  hundred  and  eighty 
feet  reach  to  about  the  height  of  four  ordinary 
three-story  buildings  piled  one  on  top  of  the  other, 

255 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  is  a  very  considerable  altitude  for  a  tower  of 
uniform  thickness  to  aspire  to,  even  when  it  stands 
upright — yet  this  one  leans  more  than  thirteen  feet 
out  of  the  perpendicular.  It  is  seven  hundred  years 
old,  but  neither  history  nor  tradition  say  whether  it 
was  built  as  it  is,  purposely,  or  whether  one  of  its 
sides  has  settled.  There  is  no  record  that  it  ever 
stood  straight  up.  It  is  built  of  marble.  It  is  an 
airy  and  a  beautiful  structure,  and  each  of  its  eight 
stories  is  encircled  by  fluted  columns,  some  of 
marble  and  some  of  granite,  with  Corinthian  capitals 
that  were  handsome  when  they  were  new.  It  is  a 
bell-tower,  and  in  its  top  hangs  a  chime  of  ancient 
bells.  The  winding  staircase  within  is  dark,  but  one 
always  knows  which  side  of  the  tower  he  is  on  be- 
cause of  his  naturally  gravitating  from  one  side  to 
the  other  of  the  staircase  with  the  rise  or  dip  of  the 
tower.  Some  of  the  stone  steps  are  foot-worn  only 
on  one  end;  others  only  on  the  other  end;  others 
only  in  the  middle.  To  look  down  into  the  tower 
from  the  top  is  like  looking  down  into  a  tilted  well. 
A  rope  that  hangs  from  the  center  of  the  top  touches 
the  wall  before  it  reaches  the  bottom.  Standing 
on  the  summit,  one  does  not  feel  altogether  com- 
fortable when  he  looks  down  from  the  high  side; 
but  to  crawl  on  your  breast  to  the  verge  on  the 
lower  side  and  try  to  stretch  your  neck  out  far 
enough  to  see  the  base  of  the  tower,  makes  your 
flesh  creep,  and  convinces  you  for  a  single  moment, 
in  spite  of  all  your  philosophy,  that  the  building  is 
falling.  You  handle  yourself  very  carefully,  all  the 
time,  under  the  silly  impression  that  if  it  is  not  falling 

256 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

your  trifling  weight  will  start  it  unless  you  are  par- 
ticular not  to  "bear  down"  on  it. 

The  Duomo,  close  at  hand,  is  one  of  the  finest 
cathedrals  in  Europe.  It  is  eight  hundred  years 
old.  Its  grandeur  has  outlived  the  high  commercial 
prosperity  and  the  political  importance  that  made  it 
a  necessity,  or  rather  a  possibility.  Surrounded  by 
poverty,  decay,  and  ruin,  it  conveys  to  us  a  more 
tangible  impression  of  the  former  greatness  of  Pisa 
than  books  could  give  us. 

The  Baptistery,  which  is  a  tew  years  older  than 
the  Leaning  Tower,  is  a  stately  rotunda  of  huge 
dimensions,  and  was  a  costly  structure.  In  it  hangs 
the  lamp  whose  measured  swing  suggested  to  Galileo 
the  pendulum.  It  looked  an  insignificant  thing  to 
have  conferred  upon  the  world  of  science  and 
mechanics  such  a  mighty  extension  of  their  domin- 
ions as  it  has.  Pondering,  in  its  suggestive  presence, 
I  seemed  to  see  a  crazy  universe  of  swinging  disks, 
the  toiling  children  of  this  sedate  parent.  He  ap- 
peared to  have  an  intelligent  expression  about  him 
of  knowing  that  he  was  not  a  lamp  at  all;  that  he 
was  a  Pendulum;  a  pendulum  disguised,  for  pro- 
digious and  inscrutable  purposes  of  his  own  deep 
devising,  and  not  a  common  pendulum  either,  but 
the  old  original  patriarchal  Pendulum — the  Abra- 
ham Pendulum  of  the  world. 

This  Baptistery  is  endowed  with  the  most  pleasing 
echo  of  all  the  echoes  we  have  read  of.  The  guide 
sounded  two  sonorous  notes,  about  half  an  octave 
apart;  the  echo  answered  with  the  most  enchanting, 
the  most  melodious,  the  richest  blending  of  sweet 

257 


MARK    TWAIN 

sounds  that  one  can  imagine.  It  was  like  a  long- 
drawn  chord  of  a  church  organ,  infinitely  softened 
by  distance.  I  may  be  extravagant  in  this  matter, 
but  if  this  be  the  case  my  ear  is  to  blame — not  my 
pen.  I  am  describing  a  memory — and  one  that  will 
remain  long  with  me. 

The  peculiar  devotional  spirit  of  the  olden  time, 
which  placed  a  higher  confidence  in  outward  forms 
of  worship  than  in  the  watchful  guarding  of  the 
heart  against  sinful  thoughts  and  the  hands  against 
sinful  deeds,  and  which  believed  in  the  protecting 
virtues  of  inanimate  objects  made  holy  by  contact 
with  holy  things,  is  illustrated  in  a  striking  manner 
in  one  of  the  cemeteries  of  Pisa.  The  tombs  are 
set  in  soil  brought  in  ships  from  the  Holy  Land  ages 
ago.  To  be  buried  in  such  ground  was  regarded  by 
the  ancient  Pisans  as  being  more  potent  for  salvation 
than  many  masses  purchased  of  the  church  and  the 
vowing  of  many  candles  to  the  Virgin. 

Pisa  is  believed  to  be  about  three  thousand  years 
old.  It  was  one  of  the  twelve  great  cities  of  ancient 
Etruria,  that  commonwealth  which  has  left  so  many 
monuments  in  testimony  of  its  extraordinary  ad- 
vancement, and  so  little  history  of  itself  that  is 
tangible  and  comprehensible.  A  Pisan  antiquarian 
gave  me  an  ancient  tear-jug  which  he  averred  was 
full  four  thousand  years  old.  It  was  found  among 
the  ruins  of  one  of  the  oldest  of  the  Etruscan  cities. 
He  said  it  came  from  a  tomb,  and  was  used  by  some 
bereaved  family  in  that  remote  age  when  even  the 
Pyramids  of  Egypt  were  young,  Damascus  a  vil- 
lage, Abraham  a  prattling  infant  and  ancient  Troy 

258 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

not  yet  dreamt  of,  to  receive  the  tears  wept  for 
some  lost  idol  of  a  household.  It  spoke  to  us  in  a 
language  of  its  own;  and  with  a  pathos  more  tender 
than  any  words  might  bring,  its  mute  eloquence 
swept  down  the  long  roll  of  the  centuries  with  its 
tale  of  a  vacant  chair,  a  familiar  footstep  missed  from 
the  threshold,  a  pleasant  voice  gone  from  the  chorus, 
a  vanished  form! — a  tale  which  is  always  so  new  to 
us,  so  startling,  so  terrible,  so  benumbing  to  the 
senses,  and  behold  how  threadbare  and  old  it  is! 
No  shrewdly  worded  history  could  have  brought  the 
myths  and  shadows  of  that  old  dreamy  age  before 
us  clothed  with  human  flesh  and  warmed  with 
human  sympathies  so  vividly  as  did  this  poor  little 
unsentient  vessel  of  pottery. 

Pisa  was  a  republic  in  the  Middle  Ages,  with  a 
government  of  her  own,  armies  and  navies  of  her 
own,  and  a  great  commerce.  She  was  a  warlike 
power,  and  inscribed  upon  her  banners  many  a 
brilliant  fight  with  Genoese  and  Turks.  It  is  said 
that  the  city  once  numbered  a  population  of  four 
hundred  thousand;  but  her  scepter  has  passed  from 
her  grasp  now,  her  ships  and  her  armies  are  gone, 
her  commerce  is  dead.  Her  battle-flags  bear  the 
mold  and  the  dust  of  centuries,  her  marts  are  de- 
serted, she  has  shrunken  far  within  her  crumbling 
walls,  and  her  great  population  has  diminished  to 
twenty  thousand  souls.  She  has  but  one  thing  left 
to  boast  of,  and  that  is  not  much;  viz.,  she  is  the 
second  city  of  Tuscany. 

We  reached  Leghorn  in  time  to  see  all  we  wished 
to  see  of  it  long  before  the  city  gates  were  closed 

2  59 


MARK    TWAIN 

for  the  evening,  and  then  came  on  board  the 
ship. 

We  felt  as  though  we  had  been  away  from  home 
an  age.  We  never  entirely  appreciated,  before, 
what  a  very  pleasant  den  our  stateroom  is;  nor 
how  jolly  it  is  to  sit  at  dinner  in  one's  own  seat  in 
one's  own  cabin,  and  hold  familiar  conversation 
with  friends  in  one's  own  language.  Oh,  the  rare 
happiness  of  comprehending  every  single  word  that 
is  said,  and  knowing  that  every  word  one  says  in 
return  will  be  understood  as  well!  We  would  talk 
ourselves  to  death  now,  only  there  are  only  about 
ten  passengers  out  of  the  sixty-five  to  talk  to.  The 
others  are  wandering,  we  hardly  know  where.  We 
shall  not  go  ashore  in  Leghorn.  We  are  surfeited 
with  Italian  cities  for  the  present,  and  much  prefer 
to  walk  the  familiar  quarter-deck  and  view  this  one 
from  a  distance. 

The  stupid  magnates  of  this  Leghorn  government 
cannot  understand  that  so  large  a  steamer  as  ours 
could  cross  the  broad  Atlantic  with  no  other  purpose 
than  to  indulge  a  party  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  a 
pleasure  excursion.  It  looks  too  improbable.  It  is 
suspicious,  they  think.  Something  more  important 
must  be  hidden  behind  it  all.  They  cannot  under- 
stand it,  and  they  scorn  the  evidence  of  the  ship's 
papers.  They  have  decided  at  last  that  we  are  a 
battalion  of  incendiary,  bloodthirsty  Garibaldians 
in  disguise!  And  in  all  seriousness  they  have  set  a 
gunboat  to  watch  the  vessel  night  and  day,  with 
orders  to  close  down  on  any  revolutionary  movement 
in  a  twinkling!     Police-boats   are  on  patrol   duty 

260 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

about  us  all  the  time,  and  it  is  as  much  as  a  sailor's 
liberty  is  worth  to  show  himself  in  a  red  shirt. 
These  policemen  follow  the  executive  officer's  boat 
from  shore  to  ship  and  from  ship  to  shore,  and 
watch  his  dark  manceuvers  with  a  vigilant  eye.  They 
will  arrest  him  yet  unless  he  assumes  an  expression 
of  countenance  that  shall  have  less  of  carnage,  insur- 
rection, and  sedition  in  it.  A  visit  paid  in  a  friendly 
way  to  General  Garibaldi  yesterday  (by  cordial  in- 
vitation) by  some  of  our  passengers,  has  gone  far  to 
confirm  the  dread  suspicions  the  government  harbors 
toward  us.  It  is  thought  the  friendly  visit  was  only 
the  cloak  of  a  bloody  conspiracy.  These  people 
draw  near  and  watch  us  when  we  bathe  in  the  sea 
from  the  ship's  side.  Do  they  think  we  are  commun- 
ing with  a  reserve  force  of  rascals  at  the  bottom? 
It  is  said  that  we  shall  probably  be  quarantined 
at  Naples.  Two  or  three  of  us  prefer  not  to  run  this 
risk.  Therefore,  when  we  are  rested,  we  propose 
to  go  in  a  French  steamer  to  Civita  Vecchia,  and 
from  thence  to  Rome,  and  by  rail  to  Naples.  They 
do  not  quarantine  the  cars,  no  matter  where  they 
got  their  passengers  from. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

HP  HERE  are  a  good  many  things  about  this  Italy 
which  I  do  not  understand — and  more  espe- 
cially I  cannot  understand  how  a  bankrupt  govern- 
ment can  have  such  palatial  railroad  depots  and  such 
marvels  of  turnpikes.  Why,  these  latter  are  as 
hard  as  adamant,  as  straight  as  a  line,  as  smooth  as 
a  floor,  and  as  white  as  snow.  When  it  is  too  dark 
to  see  any  other  object,  one  can  still  see  the  white 
turnpikes  of  France  and  Italy;  and  they  are  clean 
enough  to  eat  from,  without  a  table-cloth.  And  yet 
no  tolls  are  charged. 

As  for  the  railways — we  have  none  like  them. 
The  cars  slide  as  smoothly  along  as  if  they  were  on 
runners.  The  depots  are  vast  palaces  of  cut  marble, 
with  stately  colonnades  of  the  same  royal  stone 
traversing  them  from  end  to  end,  and  with  ample 
walls  and  ceilings  richly  decorated  with  frescoes. 
The  lofty  gateways  are  graced  with  statues,  ana  the 
broad  floors  are  all  laid  in  polished  flags  of  marble. 

These  things  win  me  more  than  Italy's  hundred 
galleries  of  priceless  art  treasures,  because  I  can 
understand  the  one  and  am  not  competent  to  appre- 
ciate the  other.  In  the  turnpikes,  the  railways,  the 
depots,  and  the  new  boulevards  of  uniform  houses 
in  Florence  and  other  cities  here,  I  see  the  genius 

262 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

of  Louis  Napoleon,  or  rather,  I  see  the  works  of  that 
statesman  imitated.  But  Louis  has  taken  care  that 
in  France  there  shall  be  a  foundation  for  these  im- 
provements— money.  He  has  always  the  where- 
withal to  back  up  his  projects;  they  strengthen 
France  and  never  weaken  her.  Her  material  pros- 
perity is  genuine.  But  here  the  case  is  different. 
This  country  is  bankrupt.  There  is  no  real  founda- 
tion for  these  great  works.  The  prosperity  they 
would  seem  to  indicate  is  a  pretense.  There  is  no 
money  in  the  treasury,  and  so  they  enfeeble  her 
instead  of  strengthening.  Italy  has  achieved  the 
dearest  wish  of  her  heart  and  become  an  independent 
state — and  in  so  doing  she  has  drawn  an  elephant 
in  the  political  lottery.  She  has  nothing  to  feed  it 
on.  Inexperienced  in  government,  she  plunged  into 
all  manner  of  useless  expenditure,  and  swamped  her 
treasury  almost  in  a  day.  She  squandered  millions 
of  francs  on  a  navy  which  she  did  not  need,  and  the 
first  time  she  took  her  new  toy  into  action  she  got 
it  knocked  higher  than  Gilderoy's  kite — to  use  the 
language  of  the  Pilgrims. 

But  it  is  an  ill  wind  that  blows  nobody  good.  A 
year  ago,  when  Italy  saw  utter  ruin  staring  her  in 
the  face  and  her  greenbacks  hardly  worth  the  paper 
they  were  printed  on,  her  Parliament  ventured  upon 
a  coup  de  main  that  would  have  appalled  the  stoutest 
of  her  statesmen  under  less  desperate  circumstances. 
They,  in  a  manner,  confiscated  the  domains  of  the 
Church!  This  in  priest-ridden  Italy!  This  in  a 
land  which  has  groped  in  the  midnight  of  priestly 
superstition  for  sixteen  hundred  years!    It  was  a 

263 


MARK    TWAIN 

rare  good  fortune  for  Italy,  the  stress  of  weather 
that  drove  her  to  break  from  this  prison-house. 

They  do  not  call  it  confiscating  the  church  prop- 
erty. That  would  sound  too  harshly  yet.  But  it 
amounts  to  that.  There  are  thousands  of  churches 
in  Italy,  each  with  untold  millions  of  treasures  stored 
away  in  its  closets,  and  each  with  its  battalion  of 
priests  to  be  supported.  And  then  there  are  the 
estates  of  the  Church — league  on  league  of  the 
richest  lands  and  the  noblest  forests  in  all  Italy — all 
yielding  immense  revenues  to  the  Church,  and  none 
paying  a  cent  in  taxes  to  the  state.  In  some  great 
districts  the  Church  owns  all  the  property — lands, 
water-courses,  woods,  mills  and  factories.  They  buy, 
they  sell,  they  manufacture,  and  since  they  pay  no 
taxes,  who  can  hope  to  compete  with  them! 

Well,  the  government  has  seized  all  this  in  effect, 
and  will  yet  seize  it  in  rigid  and  unpoetical  reality, 
no  doubt.  Something  must  be  done  to  feed  a 
starving  treasury,  and  there  is  no  other  resource 
in  all  Italy — none  but  the  riches  of  the  Church.  So 
the  government  intends  to  take  to  itself  a  great  por- 
tion of  the  revenues  arising  from  priestly  farms,  fac- 
tories, etc.,  and  also  intends  to  take  possession  of  the 
churches  and  carry  them  on,  after  its  own  fashion 
and  upon  its  own  responsibility.  In  a  few  instances 
it  will  leave  the  establishments  of  great  pet  churches 
undisturbed,  but  in  all  others  only  a  handful  of 
priests  will  be  retained  to  preach  and  pray,  a  few  will 
be  pensioned,  and  the  balance  turned  adrift. 

Pray  glance  at  some  of  these  churches  and  their 
embellishments,  and  see  whether  the  government  is 

264 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

doing  a  righteous  thing  or  not.  In  Venice,  to-day, 
a  city  of  a  hundred  thousand  inhabitants,  there  are 
twelve  hundred  priests.  Heaven  only  knows  how 
many  there  were  before  the  Parliament  reduced  their 
numbers.  There  was  the  great  Jesuit  Church. 
Under  the  old  regime  it  required  sixty  priests  to 
engineer  it — the  government  does  it  with  five  now, 
and  the  others  are  discharged  from  service.  All 
about  that  church  wretchedness  and  poverty  abound. 
At  its  door  a  dozen  hats  and  bonnets  were  doffed  to 
us,  as  many  heads  were  humbly  bowed,  and  as  many 
hands  extended,  appealing  for  pennies — appealing 
with  foreign  words  we  could  not  understand,  but 
appealing  mutely,  with  sad  eyes,  and  sunken  cheeks, 
and  ragged  raiment,  that  no  words  were  needed  to 
translate.  Then  we  passed  within  the  great  doors, 
and  it  seemed  that  the  riches  of  the  world  were 
before  us!  Huge  columns  carved  out  of  single 
masses  of  marble,  and  inlaid  from  top  to  bottom 
with  a  hundred  intricate  figures  wrought  in  costly 
verde  antique;  pulpits  of  the  same  rich  materials, 
whose  draperies  hung  down  in  many  a  pictured  fold, 
the  stony  fabric  counterfeiting  the  delicate  work  of 
the  loom;  the  grand  altar  brilliant  with  polished 
facings  and  balustrades  of  oriental  agate,  jasper, 
verde  antique,  and  other  precious  stones,  whose 
names,  even,  we  seldom  hear — and  slabs  of  price- 
less lapis  lazuli  lavished  everywhere  as  recklessly  as 
if  the  church  had  owned  a  quarry  of  it.  In  the 
midst  of  all  this  magnificence,  the  solid  gold  and 
silver  furniture  of  the  altar  seemed  cheap  and  trivial. 
Even  the  floors  and  ceilings  cost  a  princely  fortune. 

265 


MARK    TWAIN 

Now,  where  is  the  use  of  allowing  all  those  riches 
to  lie  idle,  while  half  of  that  community  hardly 
know,  from  day  to  day,  how  they  are  going  to  keep 
body  and  soul  together?  And,  where  is  the  wisdom 
in  permitting  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  millions 
of  francs  to  be  locked  up  in  the  useless  trumpery  of 
churches  all  over  Italy,  and  the  people  ground  to 
death  with  taxation  to  uphold  a  perishing  govern- 
ment? 

As  far  as  I  can  see,  Italy,  for  fifteen  hundred 
years,  has  turned  all  her  energies,  all  her  finances, 
and  all  her  industry  to  the  building  up  of  a  vast 
array  of  wonderful  church  edifices,  and  starving  half 
her  citizens  to  accomplish  it.  She  is  to-day  one 
vast  museum  of  magnificence  and  misery.  All  the 
churches  in  an  ordinary  American  city  put  together 
could  hardly  buy  the  jeweled  frippery  in  one  of  her 
hundred  cathedrals.  And  for  every  beggar  in 
America,  Italy  can  show  a  hundred — and  rags  and 
vermin  to  match.  It  is  the  wretchedest,  princeliest 
land  on  earth. 

Look  at  the  grand  Duomo  of  Florence — a  vast 
pile  that  has  been  sapping  the  purses  of  her  citizens 
for  five  hundred  years,  and  is  not  nearly  finished 
yet.  Like  all  other  men,  I  fell  down  and  wor- 
shiped it,  but  when  the  filthy  beggars  swarmed 
around  me  the  contrast  was  too  striking,  too  sug- 
gestive, and  I  said,  "Oh,  sons  of  classic  Italy,  is 
the  spirit  of  enterprise,  of  self-reliance,  of  noble 
endeavor,  utterly  dead  within  ye?  Curse  your  in- 
dolent worthlessness,  why  don't  you  rob  your 
church?" 

266 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Three  hundred  happy,  comfortable  priests  are  em- 
ployed in  that  cathedral. 

And  now  that  my  temper  is  up,  I  may  as  well  go 
on  and  abuse  everybody  I  can  think  of.  They  have 
a  grand  mausoleum  in  Florence,  which  they  built  to 
bury  our  Lord  and  Saviour  and  the  Medici  family 
in.  It  sounds  blasphemous,  but  it  is  true,  and  here 
they  act  blasphemy.  The  dead  and  damned  Medicis 
who  cruelly  tyrannized  over  Florence  and  were  her 
curse  for  over  two  hundred  years,  are  salted  away  in 
a  circle  of  costly  vaults,  and  in  their  midst  the  Holy 
Sepulcher  was  to  have  been  set  up.  The  expedition 
sent  to  Jerusalem  to  seize  it  got  into  trouble  and 
could  not  accomplish  the  burglary,  and  so  the  center 
of  the  mausoleum  is  vacant  now.  They  say  the 
entire  mausoleum  was  intended  for  the  Holy  Sepul- 
cher, and  was  only  turned  into  a  family  burying- 
place  after  the  Jerusalem  expedition  failed — but  you 
will  excuse  me.  Some  of  those  Medicis  would  have 
smuggled  themselves  in  sure.  What  they  had  not 
the  effrontery  to  do,  was  not  worth  doing.  Why, 
they  had  their  trivial,  forgotten  exploits  on  land  and 
sea  pictured  out  in  grand  frescoes  (as  did  also  the 
ancient  doges  of  Venice)  with  the  Saviour  and  the 
Virgin  throwing  bouquets  to  them  out  of  the  clouds, 
and  the  Deity  himself  applauding  from  his  throne 
in  Heaven!  And  who  painted  these  things?  Why, 
Titian,  Tintoretto,  Paul  Veronese,  Raphael — none 
other  than  the  world's  idols,  the  "old  masters." 

Andrea  del  Sarto  glorified  his  princes  in  pictures 
that  must  save  them  forever  from  the  oblivion  they 
merited,  and  they  let  him  starve.     Served  him  right, 

26; 


MARK    TWAIN 

Raphael  pictured  such  infernal  villains  as  Catherine 
and  Marie  de  Medici  seated  in  heaven  and  con- 
versing familiarly  with  the  Virgin  Mary  and  the 
angels  (to  say  nothing  of  higher  personages),  and 
yet  my  friends  abuse  me  because  I  am  a  little  preju- 
diced against  the  old  masters — because  I  fail  some- 
times to  see  the  beauty  that  is  in  their  productions. 
I  cannot  help  but  see  it,  now  and  then,  but  I  keep 
on  protesting  against  the  groveling  spirit  that  could 
persuade  those  masters  to  prostitute  their  noble 
talents  to  the  adulation  of  such  monsters  as  the 
French,  Venetian,  and  Florentine  princes  of  two  and 
three  hundred  years  ago,  all  the  same. 

I  am  told  that  the  old  masters  had  to  do  these 
shameful  things  for  bread,  the  princes  and  potentates 
being  the  only  patrons  of  art.  If  a  grandly  gifted 
man  may  drag  his  pride  and  his  manhood  in  the  dirt 
for  bread  rather  than  starve  with  the  nobility  that  is 
in  him  untainted,  the  excuse  is  a  valid  one.  It 
would  excuse  theft  in  Washingtons  and  Wellingtons, 
and  unchastity  in  women  as  well. 

But,  somehow,  I  cannot  keep  that  Medici  mauso- 
leum out  of  my  memory.  It  is  as  large  as  a  church ; 
its  pavement  is  rich  enough  for  the  pavement  of  a 
king's  palace;  its  great  dome  is  gorgeous  with  fres- 
coes; its  walls  are  made  of — what?  Marble? — 
plaster? — wood? — paper? — No.  v  Red  porphyry — 
verde  antique — jasper — oriental  agate — alabaster — 
mother-of-pearl — chalcedony — red  coral — lapis  lazu- 
li !  All  the  vast  walls  are  made  wholly  of  these  pre- 
cious stones,  worked  in  and  in  and  in  together  in 
elaborate  patterns  and  figures,  and  polished  till  they 

268 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

glow  like  great  mirrors  with  the  pictured  splendors 
reflected  from  the  dome  overhead.  And  before  a 
statue  of  one  of  those  dead  Medicis  reposes  a  crown 
that  blazes  with  diamonds  and  emeralds  enough  to 
buy  a  ship  of  the  line,  almost.  These  are  the  things 
the  government  has  its  evil  eye  upon,  and  a  hcppy 
thing  it  will  be  for  Italy  when  they  melt  away  in 
the  public  treasury. 

And  now —  However,  another  beggar  approaches. 
I  will  go  out  and  destroy  him,  and  then  come  back 
and  write  another  chapter  of  vituperation. 

Having  eaten  the  friendless  orphan — having  driven 
away  his  comrades — having  grown  calm  and  re- 
flective at  length — I  now  feel  in  a  kindlier  mood. 
I  feel  that  after  talking  so  freely  about  the  priests 
and  the  churches,  justice  demands  that  if  I  know 
anything  good  about  either  I  ought  to  say  it.  I 
have  heard  of  many  things  that  redound  to  the 
credit  of  the  priesthood,  but  the  most  notable  matter 
that  occurs  to  me  now  is  the  devotion  one  of  the 
mendicant  orders  showed  during  the  prevalence  of 
the  cholera  last  year.  I  speak  of  the  Dominican 
friars — men  who  wear  a  coarse,  heavy  brown  robe 
and  a  cowl,  in  this  hot  climate,  and  go  barefoot. 
They  live  on  alms  altogether,  I  believe.  They  must 
unquestionably  love  their  religion,  to  suffer  so  much 
for  it.  When  the  cholera  was  raging  in  Naples; 
when  the  people  were  dying  by  hundreds  and  hun- 
dreds every  day;  when  every  concern  for  the  public 
welfare  was  swallowed  up  in  selfish  private  interest, 
and  every  citizen  made  the  taking  care  of  himself 
his  sole  ohiect,  these  men  banded  themselves  together 

j6g 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  went  about  nursing  the  sick  and  burying  the 
dead.  Their  noble  efforts  cost  many  of  them  their 
lives.  They  laid  them  down  cheerfully,  and  well 
they  might.  Creeds  mathematically  precise,  and 
hair-splitting  niceties  of  doctrine,  are  absolutely 
necessary  for  the  salvation  of  some  kinds  of  souls, 
but  surely  the  charity,  the  purity,  the  unselfishness 
that  are  in  the  hearts  of  men  like  these  would  save 
their  souls  though  they  were  bankrupt  in  the  true 
religion — which  is  ours. 

One  of  these  fat  barefooted  rascals  came  here  to 
Civita  Vecchia  with  us  in  the  little  French  steamer. 
There  were  only  half  a  dozen  of  us  in  the  cabin. 
He  belonged  in  the  steerage.  He  was  the  life  of  the 
ship,  the  bloody-minded  son  of  the  Inquisition !  He 
and  the  leader  of  the  marine  band  of  a  French  man- 
of-war  played  on  the  piano  and  sang  opera  turn 
about;  they  sang  duets  together;  they  rigged  im- 
promptu theatrical  costumes  and  gave  us  extravagant 
farces  and  pantomimes.  We  got  along  first-rate 
with  the  friar,  and  were  excessively  conversational, 
albeit  he  could  not  understand  what  we  said,  and 
certainly  he  never  uttered  a  word  that  we  could 
guess  the  meaning  of. 

This  Civita  Vecchia  is  the  finest  nest  of  dirt, 
vermin,  and  ignorance  we  have  found  yet,  except 
that  African  perdition  they  call  Tangier,  which  is 
just  like  it.  The  people  here  live  in  alleys  two 
yards  wide,  which  have  a  smell  about  them  which  is 
peculiar  but  not  entertaining.  It  is  well  the  alleys 
are  not  wider,  because  they  hold  as  much  smell  now 
as  a  person  can  stand,  and,  of  course,  if  they  were 

270 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

wider  they  would  hold  more,  and  then  the  people 
would  die.  These  alleys  are  paved  with  stone,  and 
carpeted  with  deceased  cats,  and  decayed  rags,  and 
decomposed  vegetable  tops,  and  remnants  of  old 
boots,  all  soaked  with  dish-water,  and  the  people  sit 
around  on  stools  and  enjoy  it.  They  are  indolent, 
as  a  general  thing,  and  yet  have  few  pastimes. 
They  work  two  or  three  hours  at  a  time,  but  not 
hard,  and  then  they  knock  off  and  catch  flies.  This 
does  not  require  any  talent,  because  they  only  have 
to  grab — if  they  do  not  get  the  one  they  are  after, 
they  get  another.  It  is  all  the  same  to  them.  They 
have  no  partialities.  Whichever  one  they  get  is  the 
one  they  want. 

They  have  other  kinds  of  insects,  but  it  does  not 
make  them  arrogant.  They  are  very  quiet,  unpre- 
tending people.  They  have  more  of  these  kind  of 
things  than  other  communities,  but  they  do  not  boast. 

They  are  very  uncleanly — these  people — in  face, 
in  person,  and  dress.  When  they  see  anybody  with 
a  clean  shirt  on,  it  arouses  their  scorn.  The  women 
wash  clothes,  half  the  day,  at  the  public  tanks  in 
the  streets,  but  they  are  probably  somebody  else's. 
Or  maybe  they  keep  one  set  to  wear  and  another 
to  wash;  because  they  never  put  on  any  that  have 
ever  been  washed  When  they  get  done  washing, 
they  sit  in  the  alleys  and  nurse  their  cubs.  They 
nurse  one  ash-cat  at  a  time,  and  the  others  scratch 
their  backs  against  the  door-post  and  are  happy. 

All  this  country  belongs  to  the  Papal  states. 
They  do  not  appear  to  have  any  schools  here,  and 
only  one  billiard-table.     Their    education  is  at  a 

271 


MARK    TWAIN 

very  low  stage.  One  portion  of  the  men  go  into  the 
military,  another  into  the  priesthood,  and  the  rest 
into  the  shoemaking  business. 

They  keep  up  the  passport  system  here,  but  so 
they  do  in  Turkey.  This  shows  that  the  Papal 
states  are  as  far  advanced  as  Turkey.  This  fact  will 
be  alone  sufficient  to  silence  the  tongues  of  malignant 
calumniators.  I  had  to  get  my  passport  vised  for 
Rome  in  Florence,  and  then  they  would  not  let  me 
come  ashore  here  until  a  policeman  had  examined  it 
on  the  wharf  and  sent  me  a  permit.  They  did  not 
even  dare  to  let  me  take  my  passport  in  my  hands 
for  twelve  hours,  I  looked  so  formidable.  They 
judged  it  best  to  let  me  cool  down.  They  thought 
I  wanted  to  take  the  town,  likely.  Little  did  they 
know  me.  I  wouldn't  have  it.  They  examined  my 
baggage  at  the  depot.  They  took  one  of  my  ablest 
jokes  and  read  it  over  carefully  twice  and  then  read 
it  backward.  But  it  was  too  deep  for  them.  They 
passed  it  around,  and  everybody  speculated  on  it 
awhile,  but  it  mastered  them  all. 

It  was  no  common  joke.  At  length  a  veteran 
officer  spelled  it  over  deliberately  and  shook  his  head 
three  or  four  times  and  said  that,  in  his  opinion,  it 
was  seditious.  That  was  the  first  time  I  felt  alarmed. 
I  immediately  said  I  would  explain  the  document, 
and  they  crowded  around.  And  so  I  explained  and 
explained  and  explained,  and  they  took  notes  of  all 
I  said,  but  the  more  I  explained  the  more  they  could 
not  understand  it,  and  when  they  desisted  at  last, 
I  could  not  even  understand  it  myself.  They  said 
they  believed  it  was  an  incendiary  document,  leveled 

272 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

at  the  government.  I  declared  solemnly  that  it 
was  not,  but  they  only  shook  their  heads  and  would 
not  be  satisfied.  Then  they  consulted  a  good  while ; 
and  finally  they  confiscated  it.  I  was  very  sorry 
for  this,  because  I  had  worked  a  long  time  on  that 
joke,  and  took  a  good  deal  of  pride  in  it,  and  now  I 
suppose  I  shall  never  see  it  any  more.  I  suppose 
it  will  be  sent  up  and  filed  away  among  the  criminal 
archives  of  Rome,  and  will  always  be  regarded  as 
a  mysterious  infernal  machine  which  would  have 
blown  up  like  a  mine  and  scattered  the  good  Pope 
all  around,  but  for  a  miraculous  providential  inter- 
ference. And  I  suppose  that  all  the  time  I  am  in 
Rome  the  police  will  dog  me  about  from  place  to 
place  because  they  think  I  am  a  dangerous  character. 

It  is  fearfully  hot  in  Civita  Vecchia.  The  streets 
are  made  very  narrow  and  the  houses  built  very 
solid  and  heavy  and  high,  as  a  protection  against 
the  heat.  This  is  the  first  Italian  town  I  have  seen 
which  does  not  appear  to  have  a  patron  saint.  I 
suppose  no  saint  but  the  one  that  went  up  in  the 
chariot  of  fire  could  stand  the  climate. 

There  is  nothing  here  to  see.  They  have  not 
even  a  cathedral,  with  eleven  tons  of  solid  silver 
archbishops  in  the  back  room;  and  they  do  not 
show  you  any  moldy  buildings  that  are  seven  thou- 
sand years  old;  nor  any  smoke-dried  old  fire-screens 
which  are  chef  d'ceuvres  of  Rubens  or  Simpson,  or 
Titian  or  Ferguson,  or  any  of  those  parties;  and 
they  haven't  any  bottled  fragments  of  saints,  and 
not  even  a  nail  from  the  true  cross.  We  are  going 
to  Rome.     There  is  nothing  to  see  here. 

273 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

WHAT  is  it  that  confers  the  noblest  delight? 
What  is  that  which  swells  a  man's  breast  with 
pride  above  that  which  any  other  experience  can 
bring  to  him?  Discovery!  To  know  that  you  are 
walking  where  none  others  have  walked;  that  you 
are  beholding  what  human  eye  has  not  seen  before; 
that  you  are  breathing  a  virgin  atmosphere.  To 
give  birth  to  an  idea — to  discover  a  great  thought 
— an  intellectual  nugget,  right  under  the  dust  of  a 
field  that  many  a  brain-plow  had  gone  over  before. 
To  find  a  new  planet,  to  invent  a  new  hinge,  to  find 
the  way  to  make  the  lightnings  carry  your  messages. 
To  be  the  first — that  is  the  idea.  To  do  some- 
thing, say  something,  see  something,  before  anybody 
else — these  are  the  things  that  confer  a  pleasure 
compared  with  which  other  pleasures  are  tame  and 
commonplace,  other  ecstasies  cheap  and  trivial. 
Morse,  with  his  first  message,  brought  by  his  ser- 
vant, the  lightning;  Fulton,  in  that  long-drawn 
century  of  suspense,  when  he  placed  his  hand  upon 
the  throttle- valve,  and  lo,  the  steamboat  moved; 
Jenner,  when  his  patient  with  the  cow's  virus  in  his 
blood  walked  through  the  smallpox  hospitals  un- 
scathed; Howe,  when  the  idea  shot  through  his 
brain  that  for  a  hundred  and  twenty  generations  the 

274 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

eye  had  been  bored  through  the  wrong  end  of  the 
needle;  the  nameless  lord  of  art  who  laid  down  his 
chisel  in  some  old  age  that  is  forgotten  now,  and 
gloated  upon  the  finished  Laocoon;  Daguerre,  when 
he  commanded  the  sun,  riding  in  the  zenith,  to  print 
the  landscape  upon  his  insignificant  silvered  plate, 
and  he  obeyed;  Columbus,  in  the  Pinta's  shrouds, 
when  he  swung  his  hat  above  a  fabled  sea  and  gazed 
abroad  upon  an  unknown  world!  These  are  the 
men  who  have  really  lived — who  have  actually 
comprehended  what  pleasure  is — who  have  crowded 
long  lifetimes  of  ecstasy  into  a  single  moment. 

What  is  there  in  Rome  for  me  to  see  that  others 
have  not  seen  before  me?  What  is  there  for  me  to 
touch  that  others  have  not  touched?  What  is  there 
for  me  to  feel,  to  learn,  to  hear,  to  know,  that  shall 
thrill  me  before  it  pass  to  others?  What  can  I  dis- 
cover? Nothing.  Nothing  whatsoever.  One  charm 
of  travel  dies  here.  But  if  I  were  only  a  Roman! 
If,  added  to  my  own  I  could  be  gifted  with  modern 
Roman  sloth,  modern  Roman  superstition,  and 
modern  Roman  boundlessness  of  ignorance,  what 
bewildering  worlds  of  unsuspected  wonders  I  would 
discover!  Ah,  if  I  were  only  a  habitant  of  the 
Campagna  five  and  twenty  miles  from  Rome! 
Then  I  would  travel. 

I  would  go  to  America,  and  see,  and  learn,  and 
return  to  the  Campagna  and  stand  before  my 
countrymen  an  illustrious  discoverer.     I  would  say: 

' '  I  saw  there  a  country  which  has  no  overshadow- 
ing Mother  Church,  and  yet  the  people  survive.  I 
saw  a  government  which  never  was  protected  by 

275 


MARK    TWAIN 

foreign  soldiers  at  a  cost  greater  than  that  required 
to  carry  on  the  government  itself.  I  saw  common 
men  and  common  women  who  could  read;  I  even 
saw  small  children  of  common  country -people  read- 
ing from  books;  if  I  dared  think  you  would  believe 
it,  I  would  say  they  could  write,  also.  In  the  cities 
I  saw  people  drinking  a  delicious  beverage  made  of 
chalk  and  water,  but  never  once  saw  goats  driven 
through  their  Broadway  or  their  Pennsylvania 
Avenue  or  their  Montgomery  Street  and  milked  at 
the  doors  of  the  houses.  I  saw  real  glass  windows 
in  the  houses  of  even  the  commonest  people.  Some 
of  the  houses  are  not  of  stone,  nor  yet  of  bricks; 
I  solemnly  swear  they  are  made  of  wood.  Houses 
there  will  take  fire  and  burn,  sometimes — actually 
burn  entirely  down,  and  not  leave  a  single  vestige 
behind.  I  could  state  that  for  a  truth,  upon  my 
death-bed.  And  as  a  proof  that  the  circumstance  is 
not  rare,  I  aver  that  they  have  a  thing  which  they 
call  a  fire-engine,  which  vomits  forth  great  streams 
of  water,  and  is  kept  a' ways  in  readiness,  by  night 
and  by  day,  to  rush  to  houses  that  are  burning. 
You  would  think  one  engine  would  be  sufficient,  but 
some  great  cities  have  a  hundred;  they  keep  men 
hired,  and  pay  them  by  the  month  to  do  nothing 
but  put  out  fires.  For  a  certain  sum  of  money  other 
men  will  insure  that  your  house  shall  not  burn 
down;  and  if  it  burns  they  will  pay  you  for  it. 
There  are  hundreds  and  thousands  of  schools,  and 
anybody  may  go  and  learn  to  be  wise,  like  a  priest. 
In  that  singular  country,  if  a  rich  man  dies  a  sinner, 
he  is  damned;  he  cannot  buy  salvation  with  money 

276 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

for  masses.  There  is  really  not  much  use  in  being 
rich,  there.  Not  much  use  as  far  as  the  other  world 
is  concerned,  but  much,  very  much  use,  as  concerns 
this;  because  there,  if  a  man  be  rich,  he  is  very 
greatly  honored,  and  can  become  a  legislator,  a 
governor,  a  general,  a  senator,  no  matter  how  igno- 
rant an  ass  he  is — just  as  in  our  beloved  Italy  the 
nobles  hold  all  the  great  places,  even  though  some- 
times they  are  born  noble  idiots.  There,  if  a  man 
be  rich,  they  give  him  costly  presents,  they  ask  him 
to  feasts,  they  invite  him  to  drink  complicated 
beverages;  but  if  he  be  poor  and  in  debt,  they  re- 
quire him  to  do  that  which  they  term  to  'settle/ 
The  women  put  on  a  different  dress  almost  every 
day;  the  dress  is  usually  fine,  but  absurd  in  shape; 
the  very  shape  and  fashion  of  it  changes  twice  in  a 
hundred  years;  and  did  I  but  covet  to  be  called  an 
extravagant  falsifier,  I  would  say  it  changed  even 
oftener.  Hair  does  not  grow  upon  the  American 
women's  heads;  it  is  made  for  them  by  cunning 
workmen  in  the  shops,  and  is  curled  and  frizzled 
into  scandalous  and  ungodly  forms.  Some  persons 
wear  eyes  of  glass  which  they  see  through  with 
facility  perhaps,  else  they  would  not  use  them;  and 
in  the  mouths  of  some  are  teeth  made  by  the  sacri- 
legious hand  of  man.  The  dress  of  the  men  is 
laughably  grotesque.  They  carry  no  musket  in 
ordinary  life,  nor  no  long-pointed  pole;  they  wear 
no  wide  green-lined  cloak;  they  wear  no  peaked 
black  felt  hat,  no  leathern  gaiters  reaching  to  the 
knee,  no  goatskin  breeches  with  the  hair  side  out, 
no  hob-nailed  shoes,   no  prodigious   spurs.     They 

277 


MARK    TWAIN 

wear  a  conical  hat  termed  a  'nail-kag';  a  coat  of 
saddest  black;  a  shirt  which  shows  dirt  so  easily 
that  it  has  to  be  changed  every  month,  and  is  very 
troublesome;  things  called  pantaloons,  which  are 
held  up  by  shoulder-straps,  and  on  their  feet  they 
wear  boots  which  are  ridiculous  in  pattern  and  can 
stand  no  wear.  Yet  dressed  in  this  fantastic  garb, 
these  people  laughed  at  my  costume.  In  that 
country,  books  are  so  common  that  it  is  really  no 
curiosity  to  see  one.  Newspapers  also.  They  have 
a  great  machine  which  prints  such  things  by  thou- 
sands every  hour. 

"I  saw  common  men  there — men  who  were 
neither  priests  nor  princes — who  yet  absolutely 
owned  the  land  they  tilled.  It  was  not  rented  from 
the  church,  nor  from  the  nobles.  I  am  ready  to 
take  my  oath  of  this.  In  that  country  you  might 
fall  from  a  third-story  window  three  several  times, 
and  not  mash  either  a  soldier  or  a  priest.  The 
scarcity  of  such  people  is  astonishing.  In  the  cities 
you  will  see  a  dozen  civilians  for  every  soldier,  and 
as  many  for  every  priest  or  preacher.  Jews,  there, 
are  treated  just  like  human  beings,  instead  of  dogs. 
They  can  work  at  any  business  they  please;  they 
can  sell  brand-new  goods  if  they  want  to;  they  can 
keep  drug  stores;  they  can  practise  medicine  among 
Christians;  they  can  even  shake  hands  with  Chris- 
tians if  they  choose;  they  can  associate  with  them, 
just  the  same  as  one  human  being  does  with  another 
human  being;  they  don't  have  to  stay  shut  up  in 
one  corner  of  the  towns;  they  can  live  in  any  part 
of  a  town  they  like  best;  it  is  said  they  even  have 

278 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  privilege  of  buying  land  and  houses,  and  owning 
them  themselves,  though  I  doubt  that  myself;  they 
never  have  had  to  run  races  naked  through  the 
public  streets,  against  jackasses,  to  please  the  people 
in  carnival  time;  there  they  never  have  been  driven 
by  soldiers  into  a  church  every  Sunday  for  hun- 
dreds of  years  to  hear  themselves  and  their  religion 
especially  and  particularly  cursed;  at  this  very  day, 
in  that  curious  country,  a  Jew  is  allowed  to  vote, 
hold  office,  yea,  get  up  on  a  rostrum  in  the  public 
street  and  express  his  opinion  of  the  government  if 
the  government  don't  suit  him!  Ah,  it  is  wonder- 
ful. The  common  people  there  know  a  great  deal; 
they  even  have  the  effrontery  to  complain  if  they 
are  not  properly  governed,  and  to  take  hold  and 
help  conduct  the  government  themselves;  if  they 
had  laws  like  ours,  which  give  one  dollar  of  every 
three  a  crop  produces  to  the  government  for  taxes, 
they  would  have  that  law  altered;  instead  of  paying 
thirty-three  dollars  in  taxes,  out  of  every  one  hun- 
dred they  receive,  they  complain  if  they  have  to  pay 
seven.  They  are  curious  people.  They  do  not 
know  when  they  are  well  off.  Mendicant  priests  do 
not  prowl  among  them  with  baskets  begging  for  the 
church  and  eating  up  their  substance.  One  hardly 
ever  sees  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  going  around 
there  in  his  bare  feet,  with  a  basket,  begging  for 
subsistence.  In  that  country  the  preachers  are  not 
like  our  mendicant  orders  of  friars — they  have  two 
or  three  suits  of  clothing,  and  they  wash  sometimes. 
In  that  land  are  mountains  far  higher  than  the  Alban 
Mountains ;  the  vast  Roman  Campagna,  a  hundred 

279 


MARK    TWAIN 

miles  long  and  full  forty  broad,  is  really  small  com- 
pared to  the  United  States  of  America;  the  Tiber, 
that  celebrated  river  of  ours,  which  stretches  its 
mighty  course  almost  two  hundred  miles,  and  which 
a  lad  can  scarcely  throw  a  stone  across  at  Rome,  is 
not  so  long,  nor  yet  so  wide,  as  the  American  Mis- 
sissippi— nor  yet  the  Ohio,  nor  even  the  Hudson. 
In  America  the  people  are  absolutely  wiser  and 
know  much  more  than  their  grandfathers  did.  They 
do  not  plow  with  a  sharpened  stick,  nor  yet  with  a 
three-cornered  block  of  wood  that  merely  scratches 
the  top  of  the  ground.  We  do  that  because  our 
fathers  did,  three  thousand  years  ago,  I  suppose. 
But  those  people  have  no  holy  reverence  for  their 
ancestors.  They  plow  with  a  plow  that  is  a  sharp, 
curved  blade  of  iron,  and  it  cuts  into  the  earth  full 
five  inches.  And  this  is  not  all.  They  cut  their 
grain  with  a  horrid  machine  that  mows  down  whole 
fields  in  a  day.  If  I  dared,  I  would  say  that  some- 
times they  use  a  blasphemous  plow  that  works  by 
fire  and  vapor  and  tears  up  an  acre  of  ground  in  a 
single  hour — but — but — I  see  by  your  looks  that 
you  do  not  believe  the  things  I  am  telling  you. 
Alas,  my  character  is  ruined,  and  I  am  a  branded 
speaker  of  untruths.' ' 

Of  course  we  have  been  to  the  monster  Church  of 
St.  Peter,  frequently.  I  knew  its  dimensions.  I 
knew  it  was  a  prodigious  structure.  I  knew  it  was 
just  about  the  length  of  the  capitol  at  Washington — 
say  seven  hundred  and  thirty  feet.  I  knew  it  was 
three  hundred  and  sixty-four  feet  wide,  and  conse- 
quently wider  than  the  capitol.     I  knew  that  the 

280 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

cross  on  the  top  of  the  dome  of  the  church  was  four 
hundred  and  thirty-eight  feet  above  the  ground,  and 
therefore  about  a  hundred  or  maybe  a  hundred  and 
twenty-five  feet  higher  than  the  dome  of  the  capitol. 
Thus  I  had  one  gauge.  I  wished  to  come  as  near 
forming  a  correct  idea  of  how  it  was  going  to  look 
as  possible;  I  had  a  curiosity  to  see  how  much  I 
would  err.  I  erred  considerably.  St.  Peter's  did 
not  look  nearly  so  large  as  the  capitol,  and  certainly 
not  a  twentieth  part  as  beautiful,  from  the  outside. 
When  we  reached  the  door,  and  stood  fairly  within 
the  church,  it  was  impossible  to  comprehend  that  it 
was  a  very  large  building.  I  had  to  cipher  a  com- 
prehension oi  it.  I  had  to  ransack  my  memory  for 
some  more  similes.  St.  Peter's  is  bulky.  Its  height 
and  size  would  represent  two  of  the  Washington 
capitol  set  one  on  top  of  the  other — if  the  capitol 
were  wider;  or  two  blocks  or  two  blocks  and  a  half 
of  ordinary  buildings  set  one  on  top  of  the  other 
St.  Peter's  was  that  large,  but  it  could  and  would 
not  look  so.  The  trouble  was  that  everything  in  it 
and  about  it  was  on  such  a  scale  of  uniform  vastness 
that  there  were  no  contrasts  to  judge  by — none  but 
the  people,  and  I  had  not  noticed  them.  They 
were  insects.  The  statues  of  children  holding  vases 
of  holy  water  were  immense,  according  to  the  tables 
of  figures,  but  so  was  everything  else  around  them. 
The  mosaic  pictures  in  the  dome  were  huge,  and 
were  made  of  thousands  and  thousands  of  cubes  of 
glass  as  large  as  the  end  of  my  little  finger,  but 
those  pictures  looked  smooth,  and  gaudy  of  color, 
and  in  good  proportion  to  the  dome.     Evidently 

281 


MARK    TWAIN 

they  would  not  answer  to  measure  by.  Away  down 
toward  the  far  end  of  the  church  (I  thought  it  was 
really  clear  at  the  far  end,  but  discovered  afterward 
that  it  was  in  the  center,  under  the  dome)  stood  the 
thing  they  call  the  baldacchino — a  great  bronze 
pyramidal  framework  like  that  which  upholds  a 
mosquito-bar.  It  only  looked  like  a  considerably 
magnified  bedstead — no  thing  more.  Yet  I  knew  it 
was  a  good  deal  more  than  half  as  high  as  Niagara 
Falls.  It  was  overshadowed  by  a  dome  so  mighty 
that  its  own  height  was  snubbed.  The  four  great 
square  piers  or  pillars  that  stand  equidistant  from 
each  other  in  the  church,  and  support  the  roof,  I 
could  not  work  up  to  their  real  dimensions  by  any 
method  of  comparison.  I  knew  that  the  faces  of 
each  were  about  the  width  of  a  very  large  dwelling- 
house  front  (fifty  or  sixty  feet),  and  that  they  were 
twice  as  high  as  an  ordinary  three-story  dwelling, 
but  still  they  looked  small.  I  tried  all  the  different 
ways  I  could  think  of  to  compel  myself  to  under- 
stand how  large  St.  Peter's  was,  but  with  small  suc- 
cess. The  mosaic  portrait  of  an  Apostle  who  was 
writing  with  a  pen  six  feet  long  seemed  only  an 
ordinary  Apostle. 

But  the  people  attracted  my  attention  after  a 
while.  To  stand  in  the  door  of  St.  Peter's  and  look 
at  men  down  toward  its  further  extremity,  two  blocks 
away,  has  a  diminishing  effect  on  them;  surrounded 
by  the  prodigious  pictures  and  statues,  and  lost  in 
the  vast  spaces,  they  look  very  much  smaller  than 
they  would  if  they  stood  two  blocks  away  in  the  open 
air.     I   " averaged"  a  man  as  he  passed  me  and 

282 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

watched  him  as  he  drifted  far  down  by  the  baldac- 
chino  and  beyond — watched  him  dwindle  to  an  in- 
significant school-boy,  and  then,  in  the  midst  of 
the  silent  throng  of  human  pygmies  gliding  about 
him,  I  lost  him.  The  church  had  lately  been  dec- 
orated, on  the  occasion  of  a  great  ceremony  in 
honor  of  St.  Peter,  and  men  were  engaged  now  in 
removing  the  flowers  and  gilt  paper  from  the  walls 
and  pillars.  As  no  ladders  could  reach  the  great 
heights,  the  men  swung  themselves  down  from 
balustrades  and  the  capitals  of  pilasters  by  ropes,  to 
do  this  work.  The  upper  gallery  which  encircles 
the  inner  sweep  of  the  dome  is  two  hundred  and 
forty  feet  above  the  floor  of  the  church — very  few 
steeples  in  America  could  reach  up  to  it.  Visitors 
always  go  up  there  to  look  down  into  the  church 
because  one  gets  the  best  idea  of  some  of  the 
heights  and  distances  from  that  point.  While  we 
stood  on  the  floor  one  of  the  workmen  swung  loose 
from  that  gallery  at  the  end  of  a  long  rope.  I  had 
not  supposed,  before,  that  a  man  could  look  so  much 
like  a  spider.  He  was  insignificant  in  size,  and 
his  rope  seemed  only  a  thread.  Seeing  that  he  took 
up  so  little  space,  I  could  believe  the  story,  then, 
that  ten  thousand  troops  went  to  St.  Peter's  once 
to  hear  mass,  and  their  commanding  officer  came 
afterward,  and  not  finding  them,  supposed  they 
had  not  yet  arrived.  But  they  were  in  the  church, 
nevertheless — they  were  in  one  of  the  transepts. 
Nearly  fifty  thousand  persons  assembled  in  St. 
Petei's  to  hear  the  publishing  of  the  dogma  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception.     It  is  estimated  that  the 

283 


MARK    TWAIN 

floor  of  the  church  affords  standing-room  for — for  a 
large  number  of  people;  I  have  forgotten  the  exact 
figures.     But  it  is  no  matter — it  is  near  enough. 

They  have  twelve  small  pillars,  in  St.  Peter's, 
which  came  from  Solomon's  Temple.  They  have, 
also — which  was  far  more  interesting  to  me — a 
piece  of  the  true  cross,  and  some  nails,  and  a  part  of 
the  crown  of  thorns. 

Of  course,  we  ascended  to  the  summit  of  the 
dome,  and,  of  course,  we  also  went  up  into  the  gilt 
copper  ball  which  is  above  it.  There  was  room 
there  for  a  dozen  persons,  with  a  little  crowding,  and 
it  was  as  close  and  hot  as  an  oven.  Some  of  those 
people  who  are  so  fond  of  writing  their  names  in 
prominent  places  had  been  there  before  us — a 
million  or  two,  I  should  think.  From  the  dome  of 
St.  Peter's  one  can  see  every  notable  object  in 
Rome,  from  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo  to  the  Coliseum. 
He  can  discern  the  seven  hills  upon  which  Rome  is 
built.  He  can  see  the  Tiber,  and  the  locality  of 
the  bridge  which  Horatius  kept  "in  the  brave  days 
of  old"  when  Lars  Porsena  attempted  to  cross  it 
with  his  invading  host.  He  can  see  the  spot  where 
the  Horatii  and  the  Curiatii  fought  their  famous 
battle.  He  can  see  the  broad  green  Campagna, 
stretching  away  toward  the  mountains,  with  its 
scattered  arches  and  broken  aqueducts  of  the  olden 
time,  so  picturesque  in  their  gray  ruin,  and  so 
daintily  festooned  with  vines.  He  can  see  the  Alban 
Mountains,  the  Apennines,  the  Sabine  Hills,  and 
the  blue  Mediterranean.  He  can  see  a  panorama 
that  is  varied,  extensive,  beautiful  to  the  eye,  and 

284 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

more  illustrious  in  history  than  any  other  in  Europe. 
About  his  feet  is  spread  the  remnant  of  a  city  that 
once  had  a  population  of  four  million  souls;  and 
among  its  massed  edifices  stand  the  ruins  of  temples, 
columns,  and  triumphal  arches  that  knew  the 
Caesars,  and  the  noonday  of  Roman  splendor;  and 
close  by  them,  in  unimpaired  strength,  is  a  drain  of 
arched  and  heavy  masonry  that  belonged  to  that 
older  city  which  stood  here  before  Romulus  and 
Remus  were  born  or  Rome  thought  of.  The  Appian 
Way  is  here  yet,  and  looking  much  as  it  did,  per- 
haps, when  the  triumphal  processions  of  the  emperors 
moved  over  it  in  other  days  bringing  fettered  princes 
from  the  confines  of  the  earth.  We  cannot  see 
the  long  array  of  chariots  and  mail-clad  men  laden 
with  the  spoils  of  conquest,  but  we  can  imagine 
the  pageant,  after  a  fashion.  We  look  out  upon 
many  objects  of  interest  from  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's; 
and  last  of  all,  almost  at  our  feet,  our  eyes  rest  upon 
the  building  which  was  once  the  Inquisition.  How 
times  changed,  between  the  older  ages  and  the 
new!  Some  seventeen  or  eighteen  centuries  ago, 
the  ignorant  men  of  Rome  were  wont  to  put  Chris- 
tians in  the  arena  of  the  Coliseum  yonder,  and  turn 
the  wild  beasts  in  upon  them  for  a  show.  It  was 
for  a  lesson  as  well.  It  was  to  teach  the  people  to 
abhor  and  fear  the  new  doctrine  the  followers  of 
Christ  were  teaching.  The  beasts  tore  the  victims 
limb  from  limb  and  made  poor  mangled  corpses  of 
them  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  But  when  the 
Christians  came  into  power,  when  the  holy  Mother 
Church    became    mistress    of    the   barbarians,    she 

28s 


MARK    TWAIN 

taught  them  the  error  of  their  ways  by  no  such 
means.  No,  she  put  them  in  this  pleasant  Inquisi- 
tion and  pointed  to  the  Blessed  Redeemer,  who  was 
so  gentle  and  so  merciful  toward  all  men,  and  they 
urged  the  barbarians  to  love  him;  and  they  did  all 
they  could  to  persuade  them  to  love  and  honor  him 
— first  by  twisting  their  thumbs  out  of  joint  with  a 
screw;  then  by  nipping  their  flesh  with  pincers — 
red-hot  ones,  because  they  are  the  most  comfortable 
in  cold  weather;  then  by  skinning  them  alive  a 
little,  and  finally  by  roasting  them  in  public.  They 
always  convinced  those  barbarians.  The  true  reli- 
gion, properly  administered,  as  the  good  Mother 
Church  used  to  administer  it,  is  very,  very  soothing. 
It  is  wonderfully  persuasive,  also.  There  is  a  great 
difference  between  feeding  parties  to  wild  beasts  and 
stirring  up  their  finer  feelings  in  an  Inquisition. 
One  is  the  system  of  degraded  barbarians,  the  other 
of  enlightened,  civilized  people.  It  is  a  great  pity 
the  playful  Inquisition  is  no  more. 

I  prefer  not  to  describe  St.  Peter's.  It  has  been 
done  before.  The  ashes  of  Peter,  the  disciple  of 
the  Saviour,  repose  in  a  crypt  under  the  baldacchino. 
We  stood  reverently  in  that  place;  so  did  we  also  in 
the  Mamertine  Prison,  where  he  was  confined,  where 
he  converted  the  soldiers,  and  where  tradition  says 
he  caused  a  spring  of  water  to  flow  in  order  that  he 
might  baptize  them.  But  when  they  showed  us  the 
print  of  Peter's  face  in  the  hard  stone  of  the  prison 
wall  and  said  he  made  that  by  falling  up  against  it, 
we  doubted.  And  when,  also,  the  monk  at  the 
Church  of  San  Sebastian  showed  us  a  paving-stone 

286 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

with  two  great  footprints  in  it  and  said  that  Peter's 
feet  made  those,  we  lacked  confidence  again.  Such 
things  do  not  impress  one.  The  monk  said  that 
angels  came  and  liberated  Peter  from  prison  by- 
night,  and  he  started  away  from  Rome  by  the  Ap- 
pian  Way.  The  Saviour  met  him  and  told  him  to 
go  back,  which  he  did.  Peter  left  those  footprints 
in  the  stone  upon  which  he  stood  at  the  time.  It 
was  not  stated  how  it  was  ever  discovered  whose 
footprints  they  were,  seeing  the  interview  occurred 
secretly  and  at  night.  The  print  of  the  face  in  the 
prison  was  that  of  a  man  of  common  size;  the  foot- 
prints were  those  of  a  man  ten  or  twelve  feet  high. 
The  discrepancy  confirmed  our  unbelief. 

We  necessarily  visited  the  Forum,  where  Caesar 
was  assassinated,  and  also  the  Tarpeian  Rock.  We 
saw  the  Dying  Gladiator  at  the  Capitol,  and  I  think 
that  even  we  appreciated  that  wonder  of  art;  as 
much,  perhaps,  as  we  did  that  fearful  story  wrought 
in  marble,  in  the  Vatican — the  Laocoon.  And 
then  the  Coliseum. 

Everybody  knows  the  picture  of  the  Coliseum; 
everybody  recognizes  at  once  that  "looped  and 
windowed"  band-box  with  a  side  bitten  out.  Being 
rather  isolated,  it  shows  to  better  advantage  than 
any  other  of  the  monuments  of  ancient  Rome, 
Even  the  beautiful  Pantheon,  whose  pagan  altars 
uphold  the  cross  now,  and  whose  Venus,  tricked  out 
in  consecrated  gimcracks,  does  reluctant  duty  as  a 
Virgin  Mary  to-day,  is  built  about  with  shabby 
houses  and  its  stateliness  sadly  marred.  But  the 
monarch    of    all    European    ruins,    the    Coliseum, 

287 


MARK    TWAIN 

maintains  that  reserve  and  that  royal  seclusion  which 
is  proper  to  majesty.  Weeds  and  flowers  spring 
from  its  massy  arches  and  its  circling  seats,  and 
vines  hang  their  fringes  from  its  lofty  walls.  An 
impressive  silence  broods  over  the  monstrous  struc- 
ture where  such  multitudes  of  men  and  women  were 
wont  to  assemble  in  other  days.  The  butterflies 
have  taken  the  places  of  the  queens  of  fashion  and 
beauty  of  eighteen  centuries  ago,  and  the  lizards  sun 
themselves  in  the  sacred  seat  of  the  emperor.  More 
vividly  than  all  the  written  histories,  the  Coliseum 
tells  the  story  of  Rome's  grandeur  and  Rome's 
decay.  It  is  the  worthiest  type  of  both  that  exists. 
Moving  about  the  Rome  of  to-day,  we  might  find  it 
hard  to  believe  in  her  old  magnificence  and  her 
millions  of  population;  but  with  this  stubborn  evi- 
dence before  us  that  she  was  obliged  to  have  a 
theater  with  sitting-room  for  eighty  thousand  per- 
sons and  standing-room  for  twenty  thousand  more, 
to  accommodate  such  of  her  citizens  as  required 
amusement,  we  find  belief  less  difficult.  The  Coli- 
seum is  over  one  thousand  six  hundred  feet  long, 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  wide,  and  one  hundred  and 
sixty-five  high.     Its  shape  is  oval. 

In  America  we  make  convicts  useful  at  the  same 
time  that  we  punish  them  for  their  crimes.  We 
farm  them  out  and  compel  them  to  earn  money  for 
the  state  by  making  barrels  and  building  roads. 
Thus  we  combine  business  with  retribution,  and  all 
things  are  lovely.  But  in  ancient  Rome  they  com- 
bined religious  duty  with  pleasure.  Since  it  was 
necessary  that  the  new  sect  called  Christians  should 

288 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

be  exterminated,  the  people  judged  it  wise  to  make 
this  work  profitable  to  the  state  at  the  same  time, 
and  entertaining  to  the  public.  In  addition  to  the 
gladiatorial  combats  and  other  shows,  they  some- 
times threw  members  of  the  hated  sect  into  the 
arena  of  the  Coliseum  and  turned  wild  beasts  in 
upon  them.  It  is  estimated  that  seventy-thousand 
Christians  suffered  martyrdom  in  this  place.  This 
has  made  the  Coliseum  holy  ground,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  followers  of  the  Saviour.  And  well  it  might; 
for  if  the  chain  that  bound  a  saint,  and  the  footprints 
a  saint  has  left  upon  a  stone  he  chanced  to  stand 
upon,  be  holy,  surely  the  spot  where  a  man  gave  up 
his  life  for  his  faith  is  holy. 

Seventeen  or  eighteen  centuries  ago  this  Coliseum 
was  the  theater  of  Rome,  and  Rome  was  mistress  of 
the  world.  Splendid  pageants  were  exhibited  here, 
in  the  presence  of  the  emperor,  the  great  ministers  of 
state,  the  nobles,  and  vast  audiences  of  citizens  of 
smaller  consequence.  Gladiators  fought  with  gladi- 
ators and  at  times  with  warrior  prisoners  from  many 
a  distant  land.  It  was  the  theater  of  Rome — of  the 
world — and  the  man  of  fashion  who  could  not  let 
fall  in  a  casual  and  unintentional  manner  something 
about  "my  private  box  at  the  Coliseum"  could  not 
move  in  the  first  circles.  When  the  clothing-store 
merchant  wished  to  consume  the  corner  -  grocery 
man  with  envy,  he  bought  reserved  seats  in  the  front 
row  and  let  the  thing  be  known.  When  the  irre- 
sistible dry-goods  clerk  wished  to  blight  and  destroy, 
according  to  his  native  instinct,  he  got  himself  up 
regardless  of  expense  and  took  some  other  fellow's 

289 


MARK    TWAIN 

young  lady  to  the  Coliseum,  and  then  accented  the 
affront  by  cramming  her  with  ice-cream  between  the 
acts,  or  by  approaching  the  cage  and  stirring  up  the 
martyrs  with  his  whalebone  cane  for  her  edification. 
The  Roman  swell  was  in  his  true  element  only  when 
he  stood  up  against  a  pillar  and  fingered  his  mus- 
tache unconscious  of  the  ladies;  when  he  viewed  the 
bloody  combats  through  an  opera-glass  two  inches 
long;  when  he  excited  the  envy  of  provincials  by 
criticisms  which  showed  that  he  had  been  to  the 
Coliseum  many  and  many  a  time  and  was  long  ago 
over  the  novelty  of  it;  when  he  turned  away  with  a 
yawn  at  last  and  said: 

"He  a  star!  handles  his  sword  like  an  appren- 
tice brigand!  he'll  do  for  the  country,  maybe, 
but  he  don't  answer  for  the  metropolis!" 

Glad  was  the  contraband  that  had  a  seat  in  the  pit 
at  the  Saturday  matinee,  and  happy  the  Roman 
street  boy  who  ate  his  peanuts  and  guyed  the  gladi- 
ators from  the  dizzy  gallery. 

For  me  was  reserved  the  high  honor  of  discover- 
ing among  the  rubbish  of  the  ruined  Coliseum  the 
only  playbill  of  that  establishment  now  extant. 
There  was  a  suggestive  smell  of  mint-drops  about  it 
still,  a  corner  of  it  had  evidently  been  chewed,  and 
on  the  margin,  in  choice  Latin,  these  words,  were 
written  in  a  delicate  female  hand: 

Meet  me  on  the  Tarpeian  Rock  to-morrow  evening,  dear,  at 
sharp  seven.  Mother  will  be  absent  on  a  visit  to  her  friends  in 
the  Sabine  Hills.  Claudia. 

Ah,  where  is  that  lucky  youth  to-day,  and  where 
290 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  little  hand  that  wrote  those  dainty  lines?     Dust 
and  ashes  these  seventeen  hundred  years! 
Thus  reads  the  bill: 

ROMAN  COLISEUM. 

Unparalleled  Attraction! 

NEW  PROPERTIES!  NEW  LIONS!  NEW  GLADIATORS! 

Engagement  of  the  renowned 

MARCUS  MARCELLUS  VALERIAN! 

FOR    SIX    NIGHTS    ONLY! 

The  management  beg  leave  to  offer  to  the  public  an  entertain- 
ment surpassing  in  magnificence  anything  that  has  heretofore 
been  attempted  on  any  stage.  No  expense  has  been  spared  to 
make  the  opening  season  one  which  shall  be  worthy  the  gener- 
ous patronage  which  the  management  feel  sure  will  crown  their 
efforts.  The  management  beg  leave  to  state  that  they  have 
succeeded  in  securing  the  services  of  a 

GALAXY  OF  TALENT! 

such  as  has  not  been  beheld  in  Rome  before. 

The  performance  will  commence  this  evening  with  a 

GRAND  BROADSWORD  COMBAT! 

between  two  young  and  promising  amateui-s  and  a  celebrated 
Parthian  gladiator  who  has  just  arrived  a  prisoner  from  the 
Camp  of  Verus. 
This  will  be  followed  by  a  grand  moral 

BATTLE-AX  ENGAGEMENT! 

between  the  renowned  Valerian  (with  one  hand  tied  behind  him) 
and  two  gigantic  savages  from  Britain. 

After  which  the  renowned  Valerian  (if  he  survive)  will  fight 
with  the  broadsword, 

LEFT  HANDED! 

against  six  Sophomores  and  a  Freshman  from  the  Gladiatorial 
College! 

A  long  series  of  brilliant  engagements  will  follow,  in  which 
the  finest  talent  of  the  Empire  will  take  part. 

291 


MARK    TWAIN 

After  which  the  celebrated  Infant  Prodigy  known  as 

"THE  YOUNG  ACHILLES," 

will  engage  four  tiger  whelps  in  combat,  armed  with  no  other 
weapon  than  his  little  spear! 

The  whole  to  conclude  with  a  chaste  and  elegant 

GENERAL  SLAUGHTER! 

In  which  thirteen  African   Lions   and  twenty-two  Barbarian 
Prisoners  will  war  with  each  other  until  all  are  exterminated. 

BOX  OFFICE  NOW  OPEN. 

Dress  Circle  One  Dollar;  Children  and  Servants  half  price. 

An  efficient  police  force  will  be  on  hand  to  preserve  order  and 
keep  the  wild  beasts  from  leaping  the  railings  and  discommoding 
the  audience. 

Doors  open  at  7;  performance  begins  at  8. 
Positively  no  Free  Lis^ 

Diodorus  Job  Press. 

It  was  as  singular  as  it  was  gratifying  that  I  was 
also  so  fortunate  as  to  find  among  the  rubbish  of  the 
arena  a  stained  and  mutilated  copy  of  the  Roman 
Daily  Battle -Ax,  containing  a  critique  upon  this 
very  performance.  It  comes  to  hand  too  late  by 
many  centuries  to  rank  as  news,  and  therefore  I 
translate  and  publish  it  simply  to  show  how  very 
little  the  general  style  and  phraseology  of  dramatic 
criticism  has  altered  in  the  ages  that  have  dragged 
their  slow  length  along  since  the  carriers  laid  this 
one  damp  and  fresh  before  their  Roman  patrons: 

The  Opening  Season. — Coliseum. — Notwithstanding  the 
inclemency  of  the  weather,  quite  a  respectable  number  of  the 
rank  and  fashion  of  the  city  assembled  last  night  to  witness  the 
debut  upon  metropolitan  boards  of  the  young  tragedian  who 
has  of  late  been  winning  such  golden  opinions  in  the  amphi- 
theaters of  the  provinces.     Some  sixty  thousand  persons  were 

292 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

present,  and  but  for  the  fact  that  the  streets  were  almost  im- 
passable, it  is  fair  to  presume  that  the  house  would  have  been 
full.  His  august  Majesty,  the  Emperor  Aurelius,  occupied  the 
imperial  box,  and  was  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes.  Many  illustrious 
nobles  and  generals  of  the  Empire  graced  the  occasion  with  their 
presence,  and  not  the  least  among  them  was  the  young  patrician 
lieutenant  whose  laurels,  won  in  the  ranks  of  the  "Thundering 
Legion,"  are  still  so  green  upon  his  brow.  The  cheer  which 
greeted  his  entrance  was  heard  beyond  the  Tiber! 

The  late  repairs  and  decorations  add  both  to  the  comeliness 
and  the  comfort  of  the  Coliseum.  The  new  cushions  are  a 
great  improvement  upon  the  hard  marble  seats  we  have  been 
so  long  accustomed  to.  The  present  management  deserve  well 
of  the  public.  They  have  restored  to  the  Coliseum  the  gilding, 
the  rich  upholstery,  and  the  uniform  magnificence  which  old 
Coliseum  frequenters  tell  us  Rome  was  so  proud  of  fifty  years 
ago. 

The  opening  scene  last  night — the  broadsword  combat  be- 
tween two  young  amateurs  and  a  famous  Parthian  gladiator 
who  was  sent  here  a  prisoner — was  very  fine.  The  elder  of  the 
two  young  gentlemen  handled  his  weapon  with  a  grace  that 
marked  the  possession  of  extraordinary  talent.  His  feint  of 
thrusting,  followed  instantly  by  a  happily  delivered  blow 
which  unhelmeted  the  Parthian,  was  received  with  hearty 
applause.  He  was  not  thoroughly  up  in  the  backhanded  stroke, 
but  it  was  very  gratifying  to  his  numerous  friends  to  know  that 
in  time,  practice  would  have  overcome  this  defect.  However, 
he  was  killed.  His  sisters,  who  were  present,  expressed  consid- 
erable regret.  His  mother  left  the  Coliseum.  The  other  youth 
maintained  the  contest  with  such  spirit  as  to  call  forth  enthu- 
siastic bursts  of  applause.  When  at  last  he  fell  a  corpse,  his 
aged  mother  ran  screaming,  with  hair  disheveled  and  tears 
streaming  from  her  eyes,  and  swooned  away  just  as  her  hands 
were  clutching  at  the  railings  of  the  arena.  She  was  promptly 
removed  by  the  police.  Under  the  circumstances  the  woman's 
conduct  was  pardonable,  perhaps,  but  we  suggest  that  such 
exhibitions  interfere  with  the  decorum  which  should  be  pre- 
served during  the  performances,  and  are  highly  improper  in 
the  presence  of  the  Emperor.  The  Parthian  prisoner  fought 
bravely  and  >vell;  and  well  he  might,  for  he  was  fighting  for  both 

293 


MARK    TWAIN 

life  and  liberty.  His  wife  and  children  were  there  to  nerve  his 
arm  with  their  love,  and  to  remind  him  of  the  old  home  he  should 
see  again  if  he  conquered.  When  his  second  assailant  fell,  the 
woman  clasped  her  children  to  her  breast  and  wept  for  joy. 
But  it  was  only  a  transient  happiness.  The  captive  staggered 
toward  her  and  she  saw  that  the  liberty  he  had  earned  was 
earned  too  late.  He  was  wounded  unto  death.  Thus  the  first 
act  closed  in  a  manner  which  was  entirely  satisfactory.  The 
manager  was  called  before  the  curtain  and  returned  his  thanks 
for  the  honor  done  him,  in  a  speech  which  was  replete  with 
wit  and  humor,  and  closed  by  hoping  that  his  humble  efforts 
to  afford  cheerful  and  instructive  entertainment  would  con- 
tinue to  meet  with  the  approbation  of  the  Roman  public. 

The  star  now  appeared,  and  was  received  with  vociferous 
applause  and  the  simultaneous  waving  of  sixty  thousand  hand- 
kerchiefs. Marcus  Marcellus  Valerian  (stage-name — his  real 
name  is  Smith)  is  a  splendid  specimen  of  physical  development, 
and  an  artist  of  rare  merit.  His  management  of  the  battle-ax 
is  wonderful.  His  gaiety  and  his  playfulness  are  irresistible,  in 
his  comic  parts,  and  yet  they  are  [inferior  to  his  sublime  con- 
ceptions in  the  grave  realm  of  tragedy.  When  his  ax  was 
describing  fiery  circles  about  the  heads  of  the  bewildered  bar- 
barians, in  exact  time  with  his  springing  body  and  his  prancing 
legs,  the  audience  gave  way  to  uncontrollable  bursts  of  laughter; 
but  when  the  back  of  his  weapon  broke  the  skull  of  one  and 
almost  in  the  same  instant  its  edge  clove  the  other's  body  in 
twain,  the  howl  of  enthusiastic  applause  that  shook  the  building 
was  the  acknowledgment  of  a  critical  assemblage  that  he  was 
a  master  of  the  noblest  department  of  his  profession.  If  he 
has  a  fault  (and  we  are  sorry  to  even  intimate  that  he  has), 
it  is  that  of  glancing  at  the  audience,  in  the  midst  of  the  most 
exciting  moments  of  the  performance,  as  if  seeking  admiration. 
The  pausing  in  a  fight  to  bow  when  bouquets  are  thrown  to  him 
is  also  in  bad  taste.  In  the  great  left-handed  combat  he  ap- 
peared to  be  looking  at  the  audience  half  the  time,  instead  of 
carving  his  adversaries;  and  when  he  had  slain  all  the  sopho- 
mores and  was  dallying  with  the  freshman,  he  stooped  and 
snatched  a  bouquet  as  it  fell,  and  offered  it  to  his  adversary  at 
a  time  when  a  blow  was  descending  which  promised  favorably 
to  be  his  death-warrant.    Such  levity  is  proper  enough  in  the 

294 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

provinces,  we  make  no  doubt,  but  it  ill  suits  the  dignity  of 
the  metropolis.  We  trust  our  young  friend  will  take  these  re- 
marks in  good  part,  for  we  mean  them  solely  for  his  benefit. 
All  who  know  us  are  aware  that  although  we  are  at  times  justly 
severe  upon  tigers  and  martyrs,  we  never  intentionally  offend 
gladiators. 

The  Infant  Prodigy  performed  wonders.  He  overcame  his 
four  tiger  whelps  with  ease,  and  with  no  other  hurt  than  the 
loss  of  a  portion  of  his  scalp.  The  General  Slaughter  was 
rendered  with  a  faithfulness  to  details  which  reflects  the  highest 
credit  upon  the  late  participants  in  it. 

Upon  the  whole,  last  night's  performances  shed  honor  not 
only  upon  the  management  but  upon  the  city  that  encourages 
and  sustains  such  wholesome  and  instructive  entertainments. 
We  would  simply  suggest  that  the  practice  of  vulgar  young 
boys  in  the  gallery  of  shying  peanuts  and  paper  pellets  at  the 
tigers,  and  saying  "Hi-yi!"  and  manifesting  approbation  or  dis- 
satisfaction by  such  observations  as  "Bully  for  the  lion!"  "Go 
it,  Gladdy!"  "Boots!"  "Speech!"  "Take  a  walk  round  the 
block!"  and  so  on,  are  extremely  reprehensible,  when  the  Em- 
peror is  present,  and  ought  to  be  stopped  by  the  police.  Sev- 
eral times  last  night  when  the  supernumeraries  entered  the  arena 
to  drag  out  the  bodies,  the  young  ruffians  in  the  gallery  shouted, 
"Supe!  supe!"  and  also,  "Oh,  what  a  coat!"  and  "Why  don't 
you  pad  them  shanks?"  and  made  use  of  various  other  remarks 
expressive  of  derision.  These  things  are  very  annoying  to  the 
audience. 

A  matinee  for  the  little  folks  is  promised  for  this  afternoon, 
on  which  occasion  several  martyrs  will  be  eaten  by  the  tigers. 
The  regular  performance  will  continue  every  night  till  further 
notice.  Material  change  of  program  every  evening.  Benefit  of 
Valerian,  Tuesday,  29,  if  he  lives. 

I  have  been  a  dramatic  critic  myself,  in  my  time, 
and  I  was  often  surprised  to  notice  how  much  more 
I  knew  about  Hamlet  than  Forrest  did;  and  it 
gratifies  me  to  observe,  now,  how  much  better  my 
brethren  of  ancient  times  knew  how  a  broadsword 
battle  ought  to  be  fought  than  the  gladiators. 

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CHAPTER  XXVII 

SO  far,  good.  If  any  man  has  a  right  to  feel 
proud  of  himself,  and  satisfied,  surely  it  is  I. 
For  1  have  written  about  the  Coliseum  and  the 
gladiators,  the  martyrs  and  the  lions,  and  yet  have 
never  once  used  the  phrase  "butchered  to  make  a 
Roman  holiday."  I  am  the  only  free  white  man 
of  mature  age  who  has  accomplished  this  since 
Byron  originated  the  expression. 

Butchered  to  make  a  Roman  holiday  sounds  well 
for  the  first  seventeen  or  eighteen  hundred  thousand 
times  one  sees  it  in  print,  but  aftei  that  it  begins  to 
grow  tiresome.  I  find  it  in  all  the  books  concerning 
Rome — and  here  latterly  it  reminds  me  of  Judge 
Oliver.  Oliver  was  a  young  lawyer,  fresh  from  the 
schools,  who  had  gone  out  to  the  deserts  of  Nevada 
to  begin  life.  He  found  that  country,  and  our 
ways  of  life  there,  in  those  early  days,  different 
from  life  in  New  England  or  Paris.  But  he  put  on 
a  woolen  shirt  and  strapped  a  navy  revolver  to  his 
person,  took  to  the  bacon  and  beans  of  the  country, 
and  determined  to  do  in  Nevada  as  Nevada  did. 
Oliver  accepted  the  situation  so  completely  that, 
although  he  must  have  sorrowed  over  many  of  his 
trials,  he  never  complained — that  is,  he  never  com- 
plained  but   once.     He,   two   others,    and   myself, 

2Q6 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

started  to  the  new  silver-mines  in  the  Humboldt 
Mountains — he  to  be  Probate  Judge  of  Humboldt 
County,  and  we  to  mine.  The  distance  was  two 
hundred  miles.  It  was  dead  of  winter.  We  bought 
a  two-horse  wagon  and  put  eighteen  hundred  pounds 
of  bacon,  flour,  beans,  blasting-powder,  picks,  and 
shovels  in  it;  we  bought  two  sorry-looking  Mexican 
"plugs,"  with  the  hair  turned  the  wrong  way  and 
more  corners  on  their  bodies  than  there  are  on  the 
mosque  of  Omar;  we  hitched  up  and  started.  It 
was  a  dreadful  trip.  But  Oliver  did  not  complain. 
The  horses  dragged  the  wagon  two  miles  from  town 
and  then  gave  out.  Then  we  three  pushed  the 
wagon  seven  miles,  and  Oliver  moved  ahead  and 
pulled  the  horses  after  him  by  the  bits.  We  com- 
plained, but  Oliver  did  not.  The  ground  was  frozen, 
and  it  froze  our  backs  while  we  slept;  the  wind 
swept  across  our  faces  and  froze  our  noses.  Oliver 
did  not  complain.  Five  days  of  pushing  the  wagon 
by  day  and  freezing  by  night  brought  us  to  the  bad 
part  of  the  journey — the  Forty  Mile  Desert,  or  the 
Great  American  Desert,  if  you  please.  Still,  this 
mildest-mannered  man  that  ever  was  had  not  com- 
plained. We  started  across  at  eight  in  the  morning, 
pushing  through  sand  that  had  no  bottom;  toiling 
all  day  long  by  the  wrecks  of  a  thousand  wagons, 
the  skeletons  of  ten  thousand  oxen;  by  wagon-tires 
enough  to  hoop  the  Washington  Monument  to  the 
top,  and  ox-chains  enough  to  girdle  Long  Island;  by 
human  graves ;  with  our  throats  parched  always  with 
thirst;  lips  bleeding  from  the  alkali  dust;  hungry, 
perspiring,   and  very,  very  weary — so  weary  that 

297 


MARK    TWAIN 

when  we  dropped  in  the  sand  every  fifty  yards  to 
rest  the  horses,  we  could  hardly  keep  from  going  to 
sleep — no  complaints  from  Oliver;  none  the  next 
morning  at  three  o'clock,  when  we  got  across,  tired 
to  death.  Awakened  two  or  three  nights  afterward 
at  midnight,  in  a  narrow  canon,  by  the  snow  falling 
on  our  faces,  and  appalled  at  the  imminent  danger 
of  being  "snowed  in,"  we  harnessed  up  and  pushed 
on  till  eight  in  the  morning,  passed  the  "Divide" 
and  knew  we  were  saved.  No  complaints.  Fifteen 
days  of  hardship  and  fatigue  brought  us  to  the  end 
of  the  two  hundred  miles,  and  the  judge  had  not 
complained.  We  wondered  if  anything  could  exas- 
perate him.  We  built  a  Humboldt  house.  It  is 
done  in  this  way.  You  dig  a  square  in  the  steep 
base  of  the  mountain,  and  set  up  two  uprights  and 
top  them  with  two  joists.  Then  you  stretch  a  great 
sheet  of  "cotton  domestic"  from  the  point  where 
the  joists  join  the  hillside  down  over  the  joists  to 
the  ground;  this  makes  the  roof  and  the  front  of  the 
mansion;  the  sides  and  back  are  the  dirt  walls  your 
digging  has  left.  A  chimney  is  easily  made  by 
turning  up  one  corner  of  the  roof.  Oliver  was  sit- 
ting alone  in  this  dismal  den,  one  night,  by  a  sage- 
brush fire,  writing  poetry;  he  was  very  fond  of 
digging  poetry  out  of  himself — or  blasting  it  out 
when  it  came  hard.  He  heard  an  animal's  footsteps 
close  to  the  roof;  a  stone  or  two  and  some  dirt 
came  through  and  fell  by  him.  He  grew  uneasy 
and  said:  "Hi! — clear  out  from  there,  can't  you!" 
— from  time  to  time.  But  by  and  by  he  fell  asleep 
where  he  sat,  and  pretty  soon  a  mule  fell   down 

298 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  chimney!  The  fire  flew  in  every  direction,  and 
Oliver  went  over  backward.  About  ten  nights 
after  that  he  recovered  confidence  enough  to  go  to 
writing  poetry  again.  Again  he  dozed  off  to  sleep, 
and  again  a  mule  fell  down  the  chimney.  This 
time,  about  half  of  that  side  of  the  house  came  in 
with  the  mule.  Struggling  to  get  up,  the  mule 
kicked  the  candle  out  and  smashed  most  of  the 
kitchen  furniture,  and  raised  considerable  dust. 
These  violent  awakenings  must  have  been  annoying 
to  Oliver,  but  he  never  complained.  He  moved  to 
a  mansion  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  canon,  be- 
cause he  had  noticed  the  mules  did  not  go  there. 
One  night  about  eight  o'clock  he  was  endeavoring  to 
finish  his  poem,  when  a  stone  rolled  in — then  a 
hoof  appeared  below  the  canvas — then  part  of  a 
cow — the  after  part.  He  leaned  back  in  dread, 
and  shouted  "Hooy!  hooy!  get  out  of  this!"  and 
the  cow  struggled  manfully — lost  ground  steadily — 
dirt  and  dust  streamed  down,  and  before  Oliver 
could  get  well  away,  the  entire  cow  crashed  through 
on  to  the  table  and  made  a  shapeless  wreck  of 
everything ! 

Then,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  I  think,  Oliver 
complained.     He  said: 

"This  thing  is  growing  monotonous!" 

Then  he  resigned  his  judgeship  and  left  Humboldt 
County.  "Butchered  to  make  a  Roman  holiday " 
has  grown  monotonous  to  me. 

In  this  connection  I  wish  to  say  one  word  about 
Michael  Angelo  Buonarotti.  I  used  to  worship  the 
mighty  genius  of  Michael  Angelo — that  man  who 

299 


MARK    TWAIN 

was  great  in  poetry,  painting,  sculpture,  architecture 
— great  in  everything  he  undertook.  But  I  do  not 
want  Michael  Angelo  for  breakfast — for  luncheon — 
for  dinner — for  tea — for  supper — for  between  meals. 
I  like  a  change,  occasionally.  In  Genoa,  he  de- 
signed everything;  in  Milan  he  or  his  pupils  de- 
signed everything;  he  designed  the  Lake  of  Como; 
in  Padua,  Verona,  Venice,  Bologna,  who  did  we  ever 
hear  of,  from  guides,  but  Michael  Angelo?  In 
Florence,  he  painted  everything,  designed  every- 
thing, nearly,  and  what  he  did  not  design  he  used  to 
sit  on  a  favorite  stone  and  look  at,  and  they  showed 
us  the  stone.  In  Pisa  he  designed  everything  but 
the  old  shot-tower,  and  they  would  have  attributed 
that  to  him  if  it  had  not  been  so  awfully  out  of  the 
perpendicular.  He  designed  the  piers  of  Leghorn 
and  the  custom-house  regulations  of  Civita  Vecchia. 
But,  here — here  it  is  frightful.  He  designed  St. 
Peter's;  he  designed  the  Pope;  he  designed  the 
Pantheon,  the  uniform  of  the  Pope's  soldiers,  the 
Tiber,  the  Vatican,  the  Coliseum,  the  Capitol,  the 
Tarpeian  Rock,  the  Barberini  Palace,  St.  John 
Lateran,  the  Campagna,  the  Appian  Way,  the  Seven 
Hills,  the  Baths  of  Caracalla,  the  Claudian  Aqueduct, 
the  Cloaca  Maxima — the  eternal  bore  designed  the 
Eternal  City,  and  unless  all  men  and  books  do  lie, 
he  painted  everything  in  it !  Dan  said  the  other  day 
to  the  guide,  " Enough,  enough,  enough!  Say  no 
more!  Lump  the  whole  thing!  say  that  the  Creator 
made  Italy  from  designs  by  Michael  Angelo!" 

I  never  felt  so  fervently  thankful,  so  soothed,  so 
tranquil,  so  filled  with  a  blessed  peace,  as  I  did  yes- 

300 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

terday  when  I  learned  that  Michael  Angelo  was 
dead. 

But  we  have  taken  it  out  of  this  guide.  He  has 
marched  us  through  miles  of  pictures  and  sculpture 
in  the  vast  corridors  of  the  Vatican;  and  through 
miles  of  pictures  and  sculpture  in  twenty  other 
palaces;  he  has  shown  us  the  great  picture  in  the 
Sis  tine  Chapel,  and  frescoes  enough  to  fresco  the 
heavens — pretty  much  all  done  by  Michael  Angelo. 
So  with  him  we  have  played  that  game  which  has 
vanquished  so  many  guides  for  us — imbecility  and 
idiotic  questions.  These  creatures  never  suspect — 
they  have  no  idea  of  a  sarcasm. 

He  shows  us  a  figure  and  says:  "Statoo  brunzo." 
(Bronze  statue.) 

We  look  at  it  indifferently  and  the  doctor  asks: 
"By  Michael  Angelo?" 

"No — not  know  who." 

Then  he  shows  us  the  ancient  Roman  Forum. 
The  doctor  asks:  "Michael  Angelo?" 

A  stare  from  the  guide.  "No — a  thousan'  year 
before  he  is  born." 

Then  an  Egyptian  obelisk.  Again:  "Michael 
Angelo?" 

"Oh,  mon  dieu,  genteelmen!  Zis  is  two  thousan* 
year  before  he  is  born!" 

He  grows  so  tired  of  that  unceasing  question 
sometimes,  that  he  dreads  to  show  us  anything  at 
all.  The  wretch  has  tried  all  the  ways  he  can  think 
of  to  make  us  comprehend  that  Michael  Angelo  is 
only  responsible  for  the  creation  of  a  part  of  the 
world,  but  somehow  he  has  not  succeeded  yet.     Re- 

301 


MARK    TWAIN 

lief  for  overtasked  eyes  and  brain  from  study  and 
sight-seeing  is  necessary,  or  we  shall  become  idiotic 
sure  enough.  Therefore  this  guide  must  continue 
to  suffer.  If  he  does  not  enjoy  it,  so  much  the  worse 
for  him.     We  do. 

In  this  place  I  may  as  well  jot  down  a  chapter 
concerning  those  necessary  nuisances,  European 
guides.  Many  a  man  has  wished  in  his  heart  he 
could  do  without  his  guide;  but  knowing  he  could  not, 
has  wished  he  could  get  some  amusement  out  of 
him  as  a  remuneration  for  the  affliction  of  his 
society.  We  accomplished  this  latter  matter,  and 
if  our  experience  can  be  made  useful  to  others  they 
are  welcome  to  it. 

Guides  know  about  enough  English  to  tangle 
everything  up  so  that  a  man  can  make  neither  head 
nor  tail  of  it.  They  know  their  story  by  heart — the 
history  of  every  statue,  painting,  cathedral,  or  other 
wonder  they  show  you.  They  know  it  and  tell  it  as 
a  parrot  would — and  if  you  interrupt,  and  throw 
them  off  the  track,  they  have  to  go  back  and  begin 
over  again.  All  their  lives  long,  they  are  employed 
in  showing  strange  things  to  foreigners  and  listening 
to  their  bursts  of  admiration.  It  is  human  nature 
to  take  delight  in  exciting  admiration.  It  is  what 
prompts  children  to  say  "smart"  things,  and  do 
absurd  ones,  and  in  other  ways  "show  off"  when 
company  is  present.  It  is  what  makes  gossips  turn 
out  in  rain  and  storm  to  go  and  be  the  first  to  tell  a 
startling  bit  of  news.  Think,  then,  what  a  passion 
it  becomes  with  a  guide,  whose  privilege  it  is,  every 
day,  to  show  to  strangers  wonders  that  throw  them 

302 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

into  perfect  ecstasies  of  admiration!  He  gets  so 
that  he  could  not  by  any  possibility  live  in  a  soberer 
atmosphere.  After  we  discovered  this,  we  never 
went  into  ecstasies  any  more — we  never  admired 
anything — we  never  showed  any  but  impassible 
faces  and  stupid  indifference  in  the  presence  of  the 
sublimest  wonders  a  guide  had  to  display.  We  had 
found  their  weak  point.  We  have  made  good  use  of 
it  ever  since.  We  have  made  some  of  those  people 
savage,  at  times,  but  we  have  never  lost  our  own 
serenity. 

The  doctor  asks  the  questions,  generally,  because 
he  can  keep  his  countenance,  and  look  more  like  an 
inspired  idiot,  and  throw  more  imbecility  into  the 
tone  of  his  voice  than  any  man  that  lives.  It  comes 
natural  to  him. 

The  guides  in  Genoa  are  delighted  to  secure  an 
American  party,  because  Americans  so  much  won- 
der, and  deal  so  much  in  sentiment  and  emotion 
before  any  relic  of  Columbus.  Our  guide  there 
fidgeted  about  as  if  he  had  swallowed  a  spring  mat- 
tress. He  was  full  of  animation — full  of  impa- 
tience.    He  said: 

"Come  wis  me,  genteelmen! — come!  I  show  you 
ze  letter- writing  by  Christopher  Colombo! — write 
it  himself! — write  it  wis  his  own  hand! — come!" 

He  took  us  to  the  municipal  palace.  After  much 
impressive  fumbling  of  keys  and  opening  of  locks, 
the  stained  and  aged  document  was  spread  before 
us.  The  guide's  eyes  sparkled.  He  danced  about 
us  and  tapped  the  parchment  with  his  finger: 

"What  I  tell  you,  genteelmen!  Is  it  not  so?  See! 
303 


MARK    TWAIN 

handwriting  Christopher  Colombo! — write  it  him- 
self!" 

We  looked  indifferent — unconcerned.  The  doc- 
tor examined  the  document  very  deliberately,  during 
a  painful  pause.  Then  he  said,  without  any  show  of 
interest : 

"Ah — Ferguson — what — what  did  you  say  was 
the  name  of  the  party  who  wrote  this?" 

"Christopher  Colombo!  ze  great  Christopher 
Colombo!" 

Another  deliberate  examination. 

"Ah — did  he  write  it  himself,  or — or  how?" 

"He  write  it  himself! — Christopher  Colombo! 
he's  own  handwriting,  write  by  himself!" 

Then  the  doctor  laid  the  document  down  and  said : 

"Why,  I  have  seen  boys  in  America  only  four- 
teen years  old  that  could  write  better  than  that." 

"But  zis  is  ze  great  Christo — " 

"I  don't  care  who  it  is!  It's  the  worst  writing  I 
ever  saw.  Now  you  musn't  think  you  can  impose 
on  us  because  we  are  strangers.  We  are  not  fools, 
by  a  good  deal.  If  you  have  got  any  specimens  of 
penmanship  of  real  merit,  trot  them  out! — and  if 
you  haven't,  drive  on!" 

We  drove  on.  The  guide  was  considerably  shaken 
up,  but  he  made  one  more  venture.  He  had  some- 
thing which  he  thought  would  overcome  us.     He  said : 

"Ah,  genteelmen,  you  come  wis  me!  I  show  you 
beautiful,  oh,  magnificent  bust  Christopher  Colombo ! 
— splendid,  grand,  magnificent!" 

He  brought  us  before  the  beautiful  bust — for  it  was 
beautiful — and  sprang  back  and  struck  an  attitude : 

304 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"Ah,  look,  genteelmen! — beautiful,  grand, — bust 
Christopher  Colombo ! — beautiful  bust,  beautiful 
pedestal !" 

The  doctor  put  up  his  eyeglass — procured  for 
such  occasions: 

"Ah— what  did  you  say  this  gentleman's  name 
was?" 

"Christopher  Colombo!— ze  great  Christopher 
Colombo!" 

"Christopher  Colombo— the  great  Christopher 
Colombo.     Well,  what  did  he  do?" 

"Discover  America! — discover  America,  oh,  ze 
devil!" 

"Discover  America.  No — that  statement  will 
hardly  wash.  We  are  just  from  America  ourselves. 
We  heard  nothing  about  it.     Christopher  Colombo 

pleasant  name — is — is  he  dead?" 

"Oh,  corpo  di  Baccho! — three  hundred  year!" 

"What  did  he  die  of?" 

"I  do  not  know! — I  cannot  tell." 

"Smallpox,  think?" 

"I  do  not  know,  genteelmen! — I  do  not  know 
what  he  die  of!" 

'Measles,  likely?' 

"Maybe— maybe— I  do  not  know— I  think  he 
die  of  somethings.'' 

"Parents  living?" 

"Im-posseeble!" 

"Ah— which  is  the  bust  and  which  is  the  pedes- 
tal?" 

"Santa  Maria! — zis  ze  bust! — zis  ze  pedestal!" 
"Ah,    I    see,    I    see — happy    combination — very 
305 


MARK    TWAIN 

happy  combination,   indeed.     Is — is   this  the  first 
time  this  gentleman  was  ever  on  a  bust?" 

That  joke  was  lost  on  the  foreigner — guides  can- 
not master  the  subtleties  of  the  American  joke. 

We  have  made  it  interesting  for  this  Roman  guide. 
Yesterday  we  spent  three  or  four  hours  in  the  Vati- 
can again,  that  wonderful  world  of  curiosities.  We 
came  very  near  expressing  interest,  sometimes — 
even  admiration — it  was  very  hard  to  keep  from  it. 
We  succeeded  though.  Nobody  else  ever  did,  in 
the  Vatican  museums.  The  guide  was  bewildered — 
nonplussed.  He  walked  his  legs  off,  nearly,  hunt- 
ing up  extraordinary  things,  and  exhausted  all  his 
ingenuity  on  us,  but  it  was  a  failure;  we  never 
showed  any  interest  in  anything.  He  had  reserved 
what  he  considered  to  be  his  greatest  wonder  till  the 
last — a  royal  Egyptian  mummy,  the  best-preserved 
in  the  world,  perhaps.  He  took  us  there.  He  felt 
so  sure,  this  time,  that  some  of  his  old  enthusiasm 
came  back  to  him : 

"See,  genteelmen! — Mummy!     Mummy!" 

The  eyeglass  came  up  as  calmly,  as  deliberately 
as  ever. 

"Ah, — Ferguson — what  did  I  understand  you  to 
say  the  gentleman's  name  was?" 

"Name? — he  got  no  name! — Mummy! — 'Gyptian 
mummy!" 

"Yes,  yes.     Born  here?" 

"No!     'Gyptian  mummy!" 

"Ah,  just  so.     Frenchman,  I  presume?" 

"No! — not  Frenchman,  not  Roman! — born  in 
Egypta!" 

306 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"Born  in  Egypta.  Never  heard  of  Egypta  before. 
Foreign  locality,  likely.  Mummy — mummy.  How 
calm  he  is — how  self-possessed.    Is,  ah — is  he  dead?" 

"Oh,  sacr6  bleu,  been  dead  three  thousan'  year!" 

The  doctor  turned  on  him  savagely: 

"Here,  now,  what  do  you  mean  by  such  conduct 
as  this!  Playing  us  for  Chinamen  because  we  are 
strangers  and  trying  to  learn!  Trying  to  impose 
your  vile  second-hand  carcasses  on  us! — thunder 
and  lightning,  I've  a  notion  to — to — if  you've  got 
a  nice  fresh  corpse,  fetch  him  out ! — or,  by  George, 
we'll  brain  you!" 

We  make  it  exceedingly  interesting  for  this 
Frenchman.  However,  he  has  paid  us  back,  partly, 
without  knowing  it.  He  came  to  the  hotel  this 
morning  to  ask  if  we  were  up,  and  he  endeavored  as 
well  as  he  could  to  describe  us,  so  that  the  landlord 
would  know  which  persons  he  meant.  He  finished 
with  the  casual  remark  that  we  were  lunatics.  The 
observation  was  so  innocent  and  so  honest  that  it 
amounted  to  a  very  good  thing  for  a  guide  to  say. 

There  is  one  remark  (already  mentioned)  which 
never  yet  has  failed  to  disgust  these  guides.  We 
use  it  always,  when  we  can  think  of  nothing  else  to 
say.  After  they  have  exhausted  their  enthusiasm 
pointing  out  to  us  and  praising  the  beauties  of  some 
ancient  bronze  image  or  broken-legged  statue,  we 
look  at  it  stupidly  and  in  silence  for  five,  ten,  fifteen 
minutes — as  long  as  we  can  hold  out,  in  fact — and 
then  ask: 

"Is— is  he  dead?" 

That  conquers  the  serenest  of  them.  It  is  not 
307 


MARK    TWAIN 

what- they  are  looking  for — especially  a  new  guide. 
Our  Roman  Ferguson  is  the  most  patient,  unsuspect- 
ing, long-suffering  subject  we  have  had  yet.  We 
shall  be  sorry  to  part  with  him.  We  have  enjoyed 
his  society  very  much.  We  trust  he  has  enjoyed 
ours,  but  we  are  harassed  with  doubts. 

We  have  been  in  the  catacombs.  It  was  like 
going  down  into  a  very  deep  cellar,  only  it  was  a 
cellar  which  had  no  end  to  it.  The  narrow  passages 
are  roughly  hewn  in  the  rock,  and  on  each  hand,  as 
you  pass  along,  the  hollowed  shelves  are  carved  out, 
from  three  to  fourteen  deep;  each  held  a  corpse 
once.  There  are  names,  and  Christian  symbols,  and 
prayers,  or  sentences  expressive  of  Christian  hopes, 
carved  upon  nearly  every  sarcophagus.  The  dates 
belong  away  back  in  the  dawn  of  the  Christian  era, 
of  course.  Here,  in  these  holes  in  the  ground,  the 
first  Christians  sometimes  burrowed  to  escape  perse- 
cution. They  crawled  out  at  night  to  get  food,  but 
remained  under  cover  in  the  daytime.  The  priest 
told  us  that  St.  Sebastian  lived  underground  for 
some  time  while  he  was  being  hunted;  he  went  out 
one  day,  and  the  soldiery  discovered  and  shot  him 
to  death  with  arrows.  Five  or  six  of  the  early 
Popes — those  who  reigned  about  sixteen  hundred 
years  ago — held  their  papal  courts  and  advised  with 
their  clergy  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  During 
seventeen  years — from  A.  D.  235  to  A.  D.  252 — 
the  Popes  did  not  appear  above  ground.  Four  were 
raised  to  the  great  office  during  that  period.  Four 
years  apiece,  or  thereabouts.  It  is  very  suggestive 
of  the  unhealthiness  of  underground  graveyards  as 

308 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

places  of  residence.  One  Pope  afterward  spent  his 
entire  pontificate  in  the  catacombs — eight  years. 
Another  was  discovered  in  them  and  murdered  in 
the  episcopal  chair.  There  was  no  satisfaction  in 
being  a  Pope  in  those  days.  There  were  too  many 
annoyances.  There  are  one  hundred  and  sixty 
catacombs  under  Rome,  each  with  its  maze  of 
narrow  passages  crossing  and  recrossing  each  other 
and  each  passage  walled  to  the  top  with  scooped 
graves  its  entire  length.  A  careful  estimate  makes 
the  length  of  the  passages  of  all  the  catacombs  com- 
bined foot  up  nine  hundred  miles,  and  their  graves 
number  seven  millions.  We  did  not  go  through  all 
the  passages  of  all  the  catacombs.  We  were  very 
anxious  to  do  it,  and  made  the  necessary  arrange- 
ments, but  our  too  limited  time  obliged  us  to  give 
up  the  idea.  So  we  only  groped  through  the  dismal 
labyrinth  of  St.  Calixtus,  under  the  Church  of  St. 
Sebastian.  In  the  various  catacombs  are  small 
chapels  rudely  hewn  in  the  stones,  and  here  the 
early  Christians  often  held  their  religious  services  by 
dim,  ghostly  lights.  Think  of  mass  and  a  sermon 
away  down  in  those  tangled  caverns  under  ground! 
In  the  catacombs  were  buried  St.  Cecilia,  St. 
Agnes,  and  several  other  of  the  most  celebrated  of 
the  saints.  In  the  catacomb  of  St.  Calixtus,  St. 
Bridget  used  to  remain  long  hours  in  holy  contem- 
plation, and  St.  Charles  Borromeo  was  wont  to 
spend  whole  nights  in  prayer  there.  It  was  also  the 
scene  of  a  very  marvelous  thing. 

Here  the  heart  of   St.  Philip   Neri  was  so  inflamed  with 
divine  lcve  as  to  burst  his  ribs. 

309 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  find  that  grave  statement  in  a  book  published  in 
New  York,  in  1858,  and  written  by  ''Rev.  William 
H.  Neligan,  LL.D.,  MA.,  Trinity  College,  Dub- 
lin; Member  of  the  Archaeological  Society  of  Great 
Britain. "  Therefore,  I  believe  it.  Otherwise,  I 
could  not.  Under  other  circumstances  I  should 
have  felt  a  curiosity  to  know  what  Philip  had  for 
dinner. 

This  author  puts  my  credulity  on  its  mettle  every 
now  and  then.  He  tells  of  one  St.  Joseph  Cala- 
sanctius  whose  house  in  Rome  he  visited;  he  visited 
only  the  house — the  priest  has  been  dead  two  hun- 
dred years.  He  says  the  Virgin  Mary  appeared  to 
this  saint.     Then  he  continues: 

His  tongue  and  his  heart,  which  were  found  after  nearly  a 
century  to  be  whole,  when  the  body  was  disinterred  before  his 
canonization,  are  still  preserved  in  a  glass  case,  and  after  two 
centuries  the  heart  is  still  whole.  When  the  French  troops 
came  to  Rome,  and  when  Pius  VII.  was  carried  away  prisoner, 
blood  dropped  from  it. 

To  read  that  in  a  book  written  by  a  monk  far  back 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  would  surprise  no  one;  it  would 
sound  natural  and  proper;  but  when  it  is  seriously 
stated  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  by  a 
man  of  finished  education,  an  LL.D.,  MA.,  and 
an  archaeological  magnate,  it  sounds  strangely 
enough.  Still,  I  would  gladly  change  my  unbelief 
for  Neligan's  faith,  and  let  him  make  the  conditions 
as  hard  as  he  pleased. 

The  old  gentleman's  undoubting,  unquestioning 
simplicity  has  a  rare  freshness  about  it  in  these 

310 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

matter-of-fact   railroading   and   telegraphing   days. 
Hear  him,  concerning  the  Church  of  Ara  Cceli: 

In  the  roof  of  the  church,  directly  above  the  high  altar,  is 
engraved,  " Regina  Cadi  latare  Alleluia."  In  the  sixth  century 
Rome  was  visited  by  a  fearful  pestilence.  Gregory  the  Great 
urged  the  people  to  do  penance,  and  a  general  procession  was 
formed.  It  was  to  proceed  from  Ara  Cceli  to  St.  Peter's.  As 
it  passed  before  the  mole  of  Adrian,  now  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo, 
the  sound  of  heavenly  voices  was  heard  singing  (it  was  Easter 
morn) — "Regina  Casli,  Icetarel  alleluia!  quia  quern  meruisti  portare, 
alleluia!  resurrexit  sicut  dixit;  alleluia!"  The  Pontiff,  carrying 
in  his  hands  the  portrait  of  the  Virgin  (which  is  over  the  high 
altar  and  is  said  to  have  been  painted  by  St.  Luke),  answered, 
with  the  astonished  people,  "  Or  a  pro  nobis  Deum,  alleluia!"  At 
the  same  time  an  angel  was  seen  to  put  up  a  sword  in  a  scabbard, 
and  the  pestilence  ceased  on  the  same  day.  There  are  four 
circumstances  which  confirm1  this  miracle:  the  annual  procession 
which  takes  place  in  the  western  church  on  the  feast  of  St. 
Mark:  the  statue  of  St.  Michael,  placed  on  the  mole  of  Adrian, 
which  has  since  that  time  been  called  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo; 
the  antiphon  Regina  Cceli,  which  the  Catholic  church  sings 
during  paschal  time;  and  the  inscription  in  the  church. 

'The  italics  are  mine. — M.  T. 


THE    END    OF    VOL.   I 


VOLUME    II 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  The  Good-natured  Brother  of  Skulls    ...  i 

II              How  Vesuvius  is  Climbed 13 

III.           The  Rags  and  Riches  of  Naples 21 

IV             Pompeii  and  the  Proud  Sentinel 33 

V.  Seeing  Athens  by  Stealth — and  Moonlight    .  44 

VI.  Constantinople  the  Bewildering 62 

VII.  Morals  and  Whisky  are  Scarce 77 

VIII.  In  Sebastopol  the  Battered 93 

IX.  What  Richelieu  and  Odessa  Did  for  Each  Other  100 

X.  We  Visit  the  Czar  of  All  the  Russias    .    .    .  104 

XI.  Smyrniste  Girls  are  Beautiful 119 

XII.  Who  Took  the  Oysters  Up  the  Hill?     ...  130 

XIII.  Ephesus:    a  World  of  Precious  Relics    .    .    .  137 

XIV.  Our  Luxurious  Camp  on  Lebanon 149 

XV.  We  Meet  Noah's  Family 158 

XVI.  Baalbec  the  Beautiful  and  Mysterious      .    .  166 

XVII.  I  Drink  Out  of  Ananias's  Well 175 

XVIII.  Nimrod's  Tomb,  at  Jonesborough 189 

XIX.  By  Ain  Mellahah,  the  Desolate 205 

XX.  The  Blank  Voice  of  the  Turtle 216 

XXI.  The  Melancholy  Holy  Land 233 

XXII.  Where  the  Crusaders  Perished 246 

XXIII.  Where  the  Horses  Cried 259 

XXIV.  The  Bedouins — Tatterdemalion  Vagrants  .    .  272 

XXV.  Joseph's  Tomb  and  Jacob's  Well 289 

XXVI.  I  Weep  at  Adam's  Tomb 297 

XXVII.  Jerusalem — We  are  Surfeited  with  Sights!  .    .  317 

XXVIII.  We  Miss  Lot's  Wife 332 

XXIX.  Why  the  Whale  Threw  Up  Jonah      ....  354 

XXX.  We  Endure  Cairo 360 

XXXI.  Tortured  on  the  Pyramids 370 

XXXII.  Seven  Delightful  Days  in  Spain 389 

XXXIII.  Our  Small  and  Only  Mishab 393 


THE 
INNOCENTS    ABROAD 


CHAPTER  1 

FROM  the  sanguinary  sports  of  the  Holy  Inquisi- 
tion; the  slaughter  of  the  Coliseum;  and  the 
dismal  tombs  of  the  Catacombs,  I  naturally  pass  to 
the  picturesque  horrors  of  the  Capuchin  Convent. 
We  stopped  a  moment  in  a  small  chapel  in  the  church 
to  admire  a  picture  of  St.  Michael  vanquishing  Satan 
— a  picture  which  is  so  beautiful  that  I  cannot  but 
think  it  belongs  to  the  reviled  "Renaissance,"  not- 
withstanding I  believe  they  told  us  one  of  the  an- 
cient old  masters  painted  it — and  then  we  de- 
scended into  the  vast  vault  underneath. 

Here  was  a  spectacle  for  sensitive  nerves!  Evi- 
dently the  old  masters  had  been  at  work  in  this  place. 
There  were  six  divisions  in  the  apartment,  and  each 
division  was  ornamented  with  a  style  of  decoration 
peculiar  to  itself — and  these  decorations  were  in 
every  instance  formed  of  human  bones !  There  were 
shapely  arches,  built  wholly  of  thigh-bones;  there 
were  startling  pyramids,  built  wholly  of  grinning 
^kulls;  there  were  quaint  architectural  structures  of 


MARK    TWAIN 

various  kinds,  built  of  shin-bones  and  the  bones  of 
the  arm;  on  the  wall  were  elaborate  frescoes,  whose 
curving  vines  were  made  of  knotted  human  verte- 
brae; whose  delicate  tendrils  were  made  of  sinews 
and  tendons;  whose  flowers  were  formed  of  knee- 
caps and  toe-nails.  Every  lasting  portion  of  the 
human  frame  was  represented  in  these  intricate  de- 
signs (they  were  by  Michael  Angelo,  I  think),  and 
there  was  a  careful  finish  about  the  work,  and  an 
attention  to  details  that  betrayed  the  artist's  love 
of  his  labors  as  well  as  his  schooled  ability.  I  asked 
the  good-natured  monk  who  accompanied  us,  who 
did  this?  And  he  said,  "We  did  it" — meaning 
himself  and  his  brethren  up-stairs.  I  could  see  that 
the  old  friar  took  a  high  pride  in  his  curious  show. 
We  made  him  talkative  by  exhibiting  an  interest 
we  never  betrayed  to  guides. 

"Who  were  these  people?" 

"We — up-stairs — Monks  of  the  Capuchin  order — 
my  brethren." 

"How  many  departed  monks  were  required  to 
upholster  these  six  parlors?" 

"These  are  the  bones  of  four  thousand." 

"It  took  a  long  time  to  get  enough?" 

"Many,  many  centuries." 

"Their  different  parts  are  well  separated — skulls 
in  one  room,  legs  in  another,  ribs  in  another — there 
would  be  stirring  times  here  for  a  while  if  the  last 
trump  should  blow.  Some  of  the  brethren  might 
get  hold  of  the  wrong  leg,  in  the  confusion,  and  the 
wrong  skull,  and  find  themselves  limping,  and  look- 
ing through  eyes  that  were  wider  apart  or  closer 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

together  than  they  were  used  to.  You  cannot  tell 
any  of  these  parties  apart,  I  suppose?" 

' 'Oh,  yes,  I  know  many  of  them." 

He  put  his  finger  on  a  skull.  "This  was  Brother 
Anselmo — dead  three  hundred  years — a  good  man." 

He  touched  another.  "This  was  Brother  Alex- 
ander— dead  two  hundred  and  eighty  years.  This 
was  Brother  Carlo — dead  about  as  long." 

Then  he  took  a  skull  and  held  it  in  his  hand,  and 
looked  reflectively  upon  it,  after  the  manner  of  the 
grave-digger  when  he  discourses  of  Yorick. 

"This,"  he  said,  "was  Brother  Thomas.  He 
was  a  young  prince,  the  scion  of  a  proud  house  that 
traced  its  lineage  back  to  the  grand  old  days  of  Rome 
well-nigh  two  thousand  years  ago.  He  loved  beneath 
his  estate.  His  family  persecuted  him;  persecuted 
the  girl,  as  well.  They  drove  her  from  Rome;  he 
followed;  he  sought  her  far  and  wide;  he  found  no 
trace  of  her.  He  came  back  and  offered  his  broken 
heart  at  our  altar  and  his  weary  life  to  the  service  of 
God.  But  look  you.  Shortly  his  father  died,  and 
likewise  his  mother.  The  girl  returned,  rejoicing. 
She  sought  everywhere  for  him  whose  eyes  had  used 
to  look  tenderly  into  hers  out  of  this  poor  skull, 
but  she  could  not  find  him.  At  last,  in  this  coarse 
garb  we  wear,  she  recognized  him  in  the  street.  He 
knew  her.  It  was  too  late.  He  fell  where  he  stood. 
They  took  him  up  and  brought  him  here.  He  never 
spoke  afterward.  Within  the  week  he  died.  You 
can  see  the  color  of  his  hair — faded,  somewhat — 
by  this  thin  shred  that  clings  still  to  the  temple. 
This  [taking  up  a  thigh-bone]  was  his.     The  veins 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  this  leaf  in  the  decorations  over  your  head,  were 
his  finger- joints,  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago." 

This  businesslike  way  of  illustrating  a  touching 
story  of  the  heart  by  laying  the  several  fragments  of 
the  lover  before  us  and  naming  them,  was  as  gro- 
tesque a  performance,  and  as  ghastly,  as  any  I  ever 
witnessed.  I  hardly  knew  whether  to  smile  or  shud- 
der. There  are  nerves  and  muscles  in  our  frames 
whose  functions  and  whose  methods  of  working  it 
seems  a  sort  of  sacrilege  to  describe  by  cold  physio- 
logical names  and  surgical  technicalities,  and  the 
monk's  talk  suggested  to  me  something  of  this  kind. 
Fancy  a  surgeon,  with  his  nippers  lifting  tendons, 
muscles,  and  such  things  into  view,  out  of  the  com- 
plex machinery  of  a  corpse,  and  observing,  "Now 
this  little  nerve  quivers — the  vibration  is  imparted 
to  this  muscle — from  here  it  is  passed  to  this  fibrous 
substance;  here  its  ingredients  are  separated  by  the 
chemical  action  of  the  blood — one  part  goes  to  the 
heart  and  thrills  it  with  what  is  popularly  termed 
emotion,  another  part  follows  this  nerve  to  the  brain 
and  communicates  intelligence  of  a  startling  charac- 
ter— the  third  part  glides  along  this  passage  and 
touches  the  spring  connected  with  the  fluid  recep- 
tacles that  lie  in  the  rear  of  the  eye.  Thus,  by  this 
simple  and  beautiful  process,  the  party  is  informed 
that  his  mother  is  dead,  and  he  weeps."     Horrible! 

I  asked  the  monk  if  all  the  brethren  up-stairs  ex- 
pected to  be  put  in  this  place  when  they  died.  He 
answered  quietly: 

"We  must  all  lie  here  at  last." 

See  what  one  can  accustom  himself  to.    The  re- 

4 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

flection  that  he  must  some  day  be  taken  apart  like  an 
engine  or  a  clock,  or  like  a  house  whose  owner  is 
gone,  and  worked  up  into  arches  and  pyramids  and 
hideous  frescoes,  did  not  distress  this  monk  in  the 
least.  I  thought  he  even  looked  as  if  he  were  think- 
ing, with  complacent  vanity,  that  his  own  skull  would 
look  well  on  top  of  the  heap  and  his  own  ribs  add  a 
charm  to  the  frescoes  which  possibly  they  lacked  at 
present. 

Here  and  there,  in  ornamental  alcoves  stretched 
upon  beds  of  bones,  lay  dead  and  dried-up  monks, 
with  lank  frames  dressed  in  the  black  robes  one  sees 
ordinarily  upon  priests.  We  examined  one  closely. 
The  skinny  hands  were  clasped  upon  the  breast; 
two  lusterless  tufts  of  hair  stuck  to  the  skull;  the 
skin  was  brown  and  shrunken;  it  stretched  tightly 
over  the  cheek-bones  and  made  them  stand  out 
sharply;  the  crisp  dead  eyes  were  deep  in  the  sock- 
ets; the  nostrils  were  painfully  prominent,  the  end 
of  the  nose  being  gone;  the  lips  had  shriveled  away 
from  the  yellow  teeth;  and  brought  down  to  us 
through  the  circling  years,  and  petrified  there,  was 
a  weird  laugh  a  full  century  old! 

It  was  the  j oiliest  laugh,  but  yet  the  most  dreadful, 
that  one  can  imagine.  Surely,  I  thought,  it  must 
have  been  a  most  extraordinary  joke  this  veteran 
produced  with  his  latest  breath,  that  he  has  not  got 
done  laughing  at  it  yet.  At  this  moment  I  saw  that 
the  old  instinct  was  strong  upon  the  boys,  and  I  said 
we  had  better  hurry  to  St.  Peter's.  They  were  try- 
ing to  keep  from  asking,  "Is — is  he  dead?" 

It  makes  me  dizzy  to  think  of  the  Vatican — of 

5 


MARK    TWAIN 

.Its  wilderness  of  statues,  paintings,  and  curiosities  of 
every  description  and  every  age.  The  "old  mas- 
ters" (especially  in  sculpture)  fairly  swarm,  there. 
I  cannot  write  about  the  Vatican.  I  think  I  shall 
never  remember  anything  I  saw  there  distinctly  but 
the  mummies,  and  the ' 4  Transfiguration, ' '  by  Raphael, 
and  some  other  things  it  is  not  necessary  to  mention 
now.  I  shall  remember  the ' l  Transfiguration ' '  partly 
because  it  was  placed  in  a  room  almost  by  itself; 
partly  because  it  is  acknowledged  by  all  to  be  the 
first  oil-painting  in  the  world;  and  partly  because 
it  was  wonderfully  beautiful.  The  colors  are  fresh 
and  rich,  the  ' 'expression,"  I  am  told,  is  fine,  the 
"feeling"  is  lively,  the  "tone"  is  good,  the  "depth" 
is  profound,  and  the  width  is  about  four  and  a  half 
feet,  I  should  judge.  It  is  a  picture  that  really 
holds  one's  attention;  its  beauty  is  fascinating.  It 
is  fine  enough  to  be  a  Renaissance.  A  remark  I 
made  a  while  ago  suggests  a  thought — and  a  hope. 
Is  it  not  possible  that  the  reason  I  find  such  charms 
in  this  picture  is  because  it  is  out  of  the  crazy  chaos 
of  the  galleries?  If  some  of  the  others  were  set 
apart,  might  not  they  be  beautiful?  If  this  were 
set  in  the  midst  of  the  tempest  of  pictures  one  finds 
in  the  vast  galleries  of  the  Roman  palaces,  would  I 
think  it  so  handsome?  If,  up  to  this  time,  I  had 
seen  only  one  "old  master"  in  each  palace,  instead 
of  acres  and  acres  of  walls  and  ceilings  fairly  papered 
with  them,  might  I  not  have  a  more  civilized  opin- 
ion of  the  old  masters  than  I  have  now?  I  think  so. 
When  I  was  a  school -boy  and  was  to  have  a  new 
knife,  I  could  not  make  up  my  mind  as  to  which  was 

6 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  prettiest  in  the  showcase,  and  I  did  not  think 
any  of  them  were  particularly  pretty ;  and  so  I  chose 
with  a  heavy  heart.  But  when  I  looked  at  my  pur- 
chase, at  home,  where  no  glittering  blades  came  into 
competition  with  it,  I  was  astonished  to  see  how 
handsome  it  was.  To  this  day  my  new  hats  look 
better  out  of  the  shop  than  they  did  in  it  with  other 
new  hats.  It  begins  to  dawn  upon  me,  now,  that 
possibly,  what  I  have  been  taking  for  uniform  ugli- 
ness in  the  galleries  may  be  uniform  beauty  after  all. 
I  honestly  hope  it  is,  to  others,  but  certainly  it  is  not 
to  me.  Perhaps  the  reason  I  used  to  enjoy  going  to 
the  Academy  of  Fine  Arts  in  New  York  was  because 
there  were  but  a  few  hundred  paintings  in  it,  and  it 
did  not  surfeit  me  to  go  through  the  list.  I  suppose 
the  Academy  was  bacon  and  beans  in  the  Forty- Mile 
Desert,  and  a  European  gallery  is  a  state  dinner  of 
thirteen  courses.  One  leaves  no  sign  after  him  of 
the  one  dish,  but  the  thirteen  frighten  away  his 
appetite  and  give  him  no  satisfaction. 

There  is  one  thing  I  am  certain  of,  though.  With 
all  the  Michael  Angelos,  the  Raphaels,  the  Guidos, 
and  the  other  old  masters,  the  sublime  history  of 
Rome  remains  unpainted!  They  painted  Virgins 
enough,  and  Popes  enough,  and  saintly  scarecrows 
enough,  to  people  Paradise,  almost,  and  these  things 
are  all  they  did  paint.  "Nero  fiddling  o'er  burning 
Rome,"  the  assassination  of  Caesar,  the  stirring  spec- 
tacle of  a  hundred  thousand  people  bending  forward 
with  rapt  interest,  in  the  Coliseum,  to  see  two  skil- 
ful gladiators  hacking  away  each  other's  life,  a  tiger 
springing  upon  a  kneeling  martyr — these  and  a  thou- 

7 


MARK    TWAIN 

sand  other  matters  which  we  read  of  with  a  living 
interest,  must  be  sought  for  only  in  books — not 
among  the  rubbish  left  by  the  old  masters — who  are 
no  more,  I  have  the  satisfaction  of  informing  the 
public. 

They  did  paint,  and  they  did  carve  in  marble,  one 
historical  scene,  and  one  only  (of  any  great  historical 
consequence).  And  what  was  it  and  why  did  they 
choose  it,  particularly?  It  was  the  Rape  of  the 
Sabines,  and  they  chose  it  for  the  legs  and  busts. 

I  like  to  look  at  statues,  however,  and  I  like  to 
look  at  pictures,  also — even  of  monks  looking  up  in 
sacred  ecstasy,  and  monks  looking  down  in  medita- 
tion, and  monks  skirmishing  for  something  to  eat — 
and  therefore  I  drop  ill  nature  to  thank  the  papal 
government  for  so  jealously  guarding  and  so  indus- 
triously gathering  up  these  things;  and  for  permit' 
ting  me,  a  stranger  and  not  an  entirely  friendly  one, 
to  roam  at  will  and  unmolested  among  them,  charg- 
ing me  nothing,  and  only  requiring  that  I  shall  be- 
have myself  simply  as  well  as  I  ought  to  behave  in 
any  other  man's  house.  I  thank  the  Holy  Father 
right  heartily,  and  I  wish  him  long  life  and  plenty 
of  happiness. 

The  Popes  have  long  been  the  patrons  and  pre- 
servers of  art,  just  as  our  new,  practical  Republic  is 
the  encourager  and  upholder  of  mechanics.  In  their 
Vatican  is  stored  up  all  that  is  curious  and  beautiful 
in  art;  in  our  Patent  Office  is  hoarded  all  that  is 
curious  or  useful  in  mechanics.  When  a  man  in- 
vents a  new  style  of  horse-collar  or  discovers  a  new 
and  superior  method  of  telegraphing,  our  govern- 

8 


THE    INNOCENTS   ABROAD 

ment  issues  a  patent  to  him  that  is  worth  a  fortune; 
when  a  man  digs  up  an  ancient  statue  in  the  Cam- 
pagna,  the  Pope  gives  him  a  fortune  in  gold  coin. 
We  can  make  something  of  a  guess  at  a  man's  char- 
acter by  the  style  of  nose  he  carries  on  his  face. 
The  Vatican  and  the  Patent  Office  are  governmental 
noses,  and  they  bear  a  deal  of  character  about  them. 
The  guide  showed  us  a  colossal  statue  of  Jupiter, 
in  the  Vatican,  which  he  said  looked  so  damaged 
and  rusty — so  like  the  God  of  the  Vagabonds — 
because  it  had  but  recently  been  dug  up  in  the  Cam- 
pagna.  He  asked  how  much  we  supposed  this 
Jupiter  was  worth.  I  replied,  with  intelligent 
promptness,  that  he  was  probably  worth  about  four 
dollars — maybe  four  and  a  half.  "A  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars!"  Ferguson  said.  Ferguson  said,  fur- 
ther, that  the  Pope  permits  no  ancient  work  of 
this  kind  to  leave  his  dominions.  He  appoints  a 
commission  to  examine  discoveries  like  this  and  re- 
port upon  the  value ;  then  the  Pope  pays  the  discov- 
erer one-half  of  that  assessed  value  and  takes  the 
statue.  He  said  this  Jupiter  was  dug  from  a  field 
which  had  just  been  bought  for  thirty-six  thousand 
dollars,  so  the  first  crop  was  a  good  one  for  the  new 
farmer.  I  do  not  know  whether  Ferguson  always 
tells  the  truth  or  not,  but  I  suppose  he  does.  I  know 
that  an  exorbitant  export  duty  is  exacted  upon  all 
pictures  painted  by  the  old  masters,  in  order  to  dis- 
courage the  sale  of  those  in  the  private  collections. 
I  am  satisfied,  also,  that  genuine  old  masters  hardly 
exist  at  all,  in  America,  because  the  cheapest  and 
most  insignificant  of  them  are  valued  at  the  price  of 

9 


MARK    TWAIN 

a  fine  farm.  I  proposed  to  buy  a  small  trifle  of  a 
Raphael,  myself,  but  the  price  of  it  was  eighty  thou- 
sand dollars,  the  export  duty  would  have  made  it 
considerably  over  a  hundred,  and  so  I  studied  on  it 
awhile  and  concluded  not  to  take  it. 

I  wish  here  to  mention  an  inscription  I  have  seen, 
before  I  forget  it: 

"  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  peace  on  earth  to 
men  of  good  will1"  It  is  not  good  Scripture, 
but  it  is  sound  Catholic  and  human  nature. 

This  is  in  letters  of  gold  around  the  apsis  of  a 
mosaic  group  at  the  side  of  the  scala  santa,  church 
of  St.  John  Lateran,  the  Mother  and  Mistress  of  all 
the  Catholic  churches  of  the  world.  The  group 
represents  the  Saviour,  St.  Peter,  Pope  Leo,  St.  Sil- 
vester, Constantine,  and  Charlemagne.  Peter  is 
giving  the  pallium  to  the  Pope,  and  a  standard  to 
Charlemagne.  The  Saviour  is  giving  the  keys  to 
St.  Silvester,  and  a  standard  to  Constantine.  No 
prayer  is  offered  to  the  Saviour,  who  seems  to  be  of 
little  importance  anywhere  in  Rome;  but  an  inscrip- 
tion below  says,  "Blessed  Peter,  give  life  to  Pope  Leo 
and  victory  to  King  Charles.'1  It  does  not  say, 
"Intercede  for  usy  through  the  Saviour,  with  the 
Father,  for  this  boon,"  but  "Blessed  Peter,  give  it 
us." 

In  all  seriousness — without  meaning  to  be  frivo- 
lous— without  meaning  to  be  irreverent,  and  more 
than  all,  without  meaning  to  be  blasphemous, — I 
state  as  my  simple  deduction  from  the  things  I  have 
seen  and  the  things  I  have  heard,  that  the  Holy 
Personages  rank  thus  in  Rome: 

IO 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

First— "The  Mother  of  God"— otherwise  the 
Virgin   Mary. 

Second — The  Deity. 

Third — Peter. 

Fourth — Some  twelve  or  fifteen  canonized  Popes 
and  martyrs. 

Fifth — Jesus  Christ  the  Saviour — (but  always  as 
an  infant  in  arms). 

I  may  be  wrong  in  this — my  judgment  errs  often, 
just  as  is  the  case  with  other  men's — but  it  is  my 
judgment,  be  it  good  or  bad. 

Just  here  I  will  mention  something  that  seems 
curious  to  me.  There  are  no  "Christ's  Churches" 
in  Rome,  and  no  "Churches  of  the  Holy  Ghost," 
that  I  can  discover.  There  are  some  four  hundred 
churches,  but  about  a  fourth  of  them  seem  to  be 
named  for  the  Madonna  and  St.  Peter.  There  are 
so  many  named  for  Mary  that  they  have  to  be  dis- 
tinguished by  all  sorts  of  affixes,  if  I  understand  the 
matter  rightly.  Then  we  have  churches  of  St. 
Louis;  St.  Augustine;  St.  Agnes;  St.  Calixtus; 
St.  Lorenzo  in  Lucina;  St.  Lorenzo  in  Damaso; 
St.  Cecilia;  St.  Athanasius;  St.  Philip  Neri;  St. 
Catherine;  St.  Domenico,  and  a  multitude  of  lesser 
saints  whose  names  are  not  familiar  in  the  world — 
and  away  down,  clear  out  of  the  list  of  the  churches, 
comes  a  couple  of  hospitals :  one  of  them  is  named 
for  the  Saviour  and  the  other  for  the  Holy  Ghost ! 

Day  after  day  and  night  after  night  we  have  wan- 
dered among  the  crumbling  wonders  of  Rome;  day 
after  day  and  night  after  night  we  have  fed  upon  the 
dust  and  decay  of  five-and-twenty  centuries — have 

ii 


MARK    TWAIN 

brooded  over  them  by  day  and  dreamt  of  them  by 
night  till  sometimes  we  seemed  moldering  away  our- 
selves, and  growing  defaced  and  cornerless,  and  liable 
at  any  moment  to  fall  a  prey  to  some  antiquary  and 
be  patched  in  the  legs,  and  "restored"  with  an  un- 
seemly nose,  and  labeled  wrong  and  dated  wrong, 
and  set  up  in  the  Vatican  for  poets  to  drivel  about 
and  vandals  to  scribble  their  names  on  forever  and 
forevermore. 

But  the  surest  way  to  stop  writing  about  Rome  is 
to  stop.  I  wished  to  write  a  real  "guide-book" 
chapter  on  this  fascinating  city,  but  I  could  not  do 
it,  because  I  have  felt  all  the  time  like  a  boy  in  a 
candy  shop — there  was  everything  to  choose  from, 
and  yet  no  choice.  I  have  drifted  along  hopelessly 
for  a  hundred  pages  of  manuscript  without  knowing 
where  to  commence.  I  will  not  commence  at  all. 
Our  passports  have  been  examined.  We  will  go  to 
Naples. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  ship  is  lying  here  in  the  harbor  of  Naples — 
quarantined.  She  has  been  here  several  days 
and  will  remain  several  more.  We  that  came  by  rail 
from  Rome  have  escaped  this  misfortune.  Of 
course  no  one  is  allowed  to  go  on  board  the  ship,  or 
come  ashore  from  her.  She  is  a  prison,  now.  The 
passengers  probably  spend  the  long,  blazing  days 
looking  out  from  under  the  awnings  at  Vesuvius  and 
the  beautiful  city — and  in  swearing.  Think  of  ten 
days  of  this  sort  of  pastime! — We  go  out  every  day 
in  a  boat  and  request  them  to  come  ashore.  It 
soothes  them.  We  lie  ten  steps  from  the  ship  and 
tell  them  how  splendid  the  city  is;  and  how  much 
better  the  hotel  fare  is  here  than  anywhere  else  in 
Europe;  and  how  cool  it  is;  and  what  frozen  con- 
tinents of  ice-cream  there  are;  and  what  a  time  we 
are  having  cavorting  about  the  country  and  sailing 
to  the  islands  in  the  Bay.     This  tranquilizes  them. 

ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS 

I  shall  remember  our  trip  to  Vesuvius  for  many  a 
day — partly  because  of  its  sight-seeing  experiences, 
but  chiefly  on  account  of  the  fatigue  of  the  journey. 
Two  or  three  of  us  had  been  resting  ourselves  among 
the  tranquil  and  beautiful  scenery  of  the  island  of 
Ischia,  eighteen  miles  out  in  the  harbor,  for  two 

13 


MARK    TWAIN 

days;  we  called  it  "resting,"  but  I  do  not  remember 
now  what  the  resting  consisted  of,  for  when  we  got 
back  to  Naples  we  had  not  slept  for  forty-eight 
hours.  We  were  just  about  to  go  to  bed  early  in  the 
evening,  and  catch  up  on  some  of  the  sleep  we  had 
lost,  when  we  heard  of  this  Vesuvius  expedition. 
There  were  to  be  eight  of  us  in  the  party,  and  we 
were  to  leave  Naples  at  midnight.  We  laid  in  some 
provisions  for  the  trip,  engaged  carriages  to  take  us 
to  Annunciation,  and  then  moved  about  the  city, 
to  keep  awake,  till  twelve.  We  got  away  punctually, 
and  in  the  course  of  an  hour  and  a  half  arrived  at 
the  town  of  Annunciation.  Annunciation  is  the 
very  last  place  under  the  sun.  In  other  towns  in 
Italy,  the  people  lie  around  quietly  and  wait  for 
you  to  ask  them  a  question  or  do  some  overt  act 
that  can  be  charged  for — but  in  Annunciation  they 
have  lost  even  that  fragment  of  delicacy;  they  seize 
a  lady's  shawl  from  a  chair  and  hand  it  to  her  and 
charge  a  penny;  they  open  a  carriage  door,  and 
charge  for  it — shut  it  when  you  get  out,  and  charge 
for  it;  they  help  you  to  take  off  a  duster — two 
cents;  brush  your  clothes  and  make  them  worse 
than  they  were  before — two  cents;  smile  upon  you 
— two  cents;  bow,  with  a  lickspittle  smirk,  hat  in 
hand — two  cents;  they  volunteer  all  information, 
such  as  that  the  mules  will  arrive  presently — two 
cents — warm  day,  sir — two  cents — take  you  four 
hours  to  make  the  ascent — two  cents.  And  so  they 
go.  They  crowd  you — infest  you — swarm  about 
you,  and  sweat  and  smell  offensively,  and  look 
sneaking  and  mean,  and  obsequious.     There  is  no 

ii 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

office  too  degrading  for  them  to  perform,  for  money. 
I  have  had  no  opportunity  to  find  out  anything  about 
the  upper  classes  by  my  own  observation,  but  from 
what  I  hear  said  about  them  I  judge  that  what  they 
lack  in  one  or  two  of  the  bad  traits  the  canaille  have 
they  make  up  in  one  or  two  others  that  are  worse .  How 
the  people  beg ! — many  of  them  very  well  dressed,  too. 
I  said  I  knew  nothing  against  the  upper  classes  by 
personal  observation.  I  must  recall  it!  I  had  for- 
gotten. What  I  saw  their  bravest  and  their  fairest 
do  last  night,  the  lowest  multitude  that  could  be 
scraped  up  out  of  the  purlieus  of  Christendom  would 
blush  to  do,  I  think.  They  assembled  by  hundreds, 
and  even  thousands,  in  the  great  Theater  of  San 
Carlo,  to  do — what?  Why,  simply,  to  make  fun  of 
an  old  woman — to  deride,  to  hiss,  to  jeer  at  an 
actress  they  once  worshiped,  but  whose  beauty  is 
faded  now  and  whose  voice  has  lost  its  former  rich- 
ness. Everybody  spoke  of  the  rare  sport  there  was 
to  be.  They  said  the  theater  would  be  crammed, 
because  Frezzolini  was  going  to  sing.  It  was  said 
she  could  not  sing  well,  now,  but  then  the  people 
liked  to  see  her,  anyhow.  And  so  we  went.  And 
every  time  the  woman  sang  they  hissed  and  laughed 
— the  whole  magnificent  house — and  as  soon  as  she 
left  the  stage  they  called  her  on  again  with  applause. 
Once  or  twice  she  was  encored  five  and  six  times  in 
succession,  and  received  with  hisses  when  she  ap- 
peared, and  discharged  with  hisses  and  laughter  when 
she  had  finished — then  instantly  encored  and  in- 
sulted again!  And  how  the  high-born  knaves  en- 
joyed it !    White-kidded  gentlemen  and  ladies  laughed 

is 


MARK    TWAIN 

till  the  tears  came,  and  clapped  their  hands  in  very 
ecstasy  when  that  unhappy  old  woman  would  come 
meekly  out  for  the  sixth  time,  with  uncomplaining 
patience,  to  meet  a  storm  of  hisses!  It  was  the 
crudest  exhibition — the  most  wanton,  the  most  un- 
feeling. The  singer  would  have  conquered  an  audi- 
ence of  American  rowdies  by  her  brave,  unflinching 
tranquillity  (for  she  answered  encore  after  encore, 
and  smiled  and  bowed  pleasantly,  and  sang  the  best 
she  possibly  could,  and  went  bowing  off,  through  all 
the  jeers  and  hisses,  without  ever  losing  countenance 
or  temper) :  and  surely  in  any  other  land  than  Italy 
her  sex  and  her  helplessness  must  have  been  an 
ample  protection  to  her — she  could  have  needed  no 
other.  Think  what  a  multitude  of  small  souls  were 
crowded  into  that  theater  last  night.  If  the  manager 
could  have  filled  his  theater  with  Neapolitan  souls 
alone,  without  the  bodies,  he  could  not  have  cleared 
less  than  ninety  millions  of  dollars.  What  traits  of 
character  must  a  man  have  to  enable  him  to  help 
three  thousand  miscreants  to  hiss,  and  jeer,  and 
laugh  at  one  friendless  old  woman,  and  shamefully 
humiliate  her?  He  must  have  all  the  vile,  mean 
traits  there  are.  My  observation  persuades  me  (I 
do  not  like  to  venture  beyond  my  own  personal  ob- 
servation) that  the  upper  classes  of  Naples  possess 
those  traits  of  character.  Otherwise  they  may  be 
very  good  people;    I  cannot  say. 

ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

In  this  city  of  Naples,  they  believe  in  and  support 
one  of  the  wretchedest  of  all  the  religious  impostures 

l6 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

one  can  find  in  Italy — the  miraculous  liquefaction 
of  the  blood  of  St.  Januarius.  Twice  a  year  the 
priests  assemble  all  the  people  at  the  Cathedral,  and 
get  out  this  vial  of  clotted  blood  and  let  them  see  it 
slowly  dissolve  and  become  liquid — and  every  day 
for  eight  days  this  dismal  farce  is  repeated  while 
the  priests  go  among  the  crowd  and  collect  money 
for  the  exhibition.  The  first  day,  the  blood  liquefies 
in  forty-seven  minutes — the  church  is  crammed, 
then,  and  time  must  be  allowed  the  collectors  to  get 
around:  after  that  it  liquefies  a  little  quicker  and  a 
little  quicker,  every  day,  as  the  houses  grow  smaller, 
till  on  the  eighth  day,  with  only  a  few  dozen  present 
to  see  the  miracle,  it  liquefies  in  four  minutes. 

And  here,  also,  they  used  to  have  a  grand  proces- 
sion, of  priests,  citizens,  soldiers,  sailors,  and  the 
high  dignitaries  of  the  City  Government,  once  a  year, 
to  shave  the  head  of  a  made-up  Madonna — a  stuffed 
and  painted  image,  like  a  milliner's  dummy — whose 
hair  miraculously  grew  and  restored  itself  every 
twelve  months.  They  still  kept  up  this  shaving 
procession  as  late  as  four  or  five  years  ago.  It  was 
a  source  of  great  profit  to  the  church  that  possessed 
the  remarkable  effigy,  and  the  ceremony  of  the  public 
barbering  of  her  was  always  carried  out  with  the 
greatest  possible  eclat  and  display — the  more  the 
better,  because  the  more  excitement  there  was  about 
it  the  larger  the  crowds  it  drew  and  the  heavier 
the  revenues  it  produced — but  at  last  a  day  came 
when  the  Pope  and  his  servants  were  unpopular  in 
Naples,  and  the  City  Government  stopped  the 
Madonna's  annual  show. 

17 


MARK    TWAIN 

There  we  have  two  specimens  of  these  Neapolitan? 
— two  of  the  silliest  possible  frauds,  which  half  the 
population  religiously  and  faithfully  believed,  and 
the  other  half  either  believed  also  or  else  said  nothing 
about,  and  thus  lent  themselves  to  the  support  of  the 
imposture.  I  am  very  well  satisfied  to  think  the 
whole  population  believed  in  those  poor,  cheap 
miracles — a  people  who  want  two  cents  every  time 
they  bow  to  you,  and  who  abuse  a  woman,  are 
capable  of  it,  I  think. 

ASCENT   OF    VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

These  Neapolitans  always  ask  four  times  as  much 
money  as  they  intend  to  take,  but  if  you  give  them 
what  they  first  demand,  they  feel  ashamed  of  them 
selves  for  aiming  so  low,  and  immediately  ask  more. 
When  money  is  to  be  paid  and  received,  there  is 
always  some  vehement  jawing  and  gesticulating 
about  it.  One  cannot  buy  and  pay  for  two  cents' 
worth  of  clams  without  trouble  and  a  quarrel.  One 
"course,"  in  a  two-horse  carriage,  costs  a  franc — 
that  is  law — but  the  hackman  always  demands  more, 
on  some  pretense  or  other,  and  if  he  gets  it  he  makes 
a  new  demand.  It  is  said  that  a  stranger  took  a 
one-horse  carriage  for  a  course — tariff,  half  a  franc. 
He  gave  the  man  five  francs,  by  way  of  experiment. 
He  demanded  more,  and  received  another  franc. 
Again  he  demanded  more,  and  got  a  franc — de- 
manded more,  and  it  was  refused.  He  grew  vehe- 
ment— was  again  refused,  and  became  noisy.  The 
stranger  said,  "Well,  give  me  the  seven  francs  again, 
and  I  will  see  what  I  can  do" — and  when  he  got 

18 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

them,  he  handed  the  hackman  half  a  franc,  and  he 
immediately  asked  for  two  cents  to  buy  a  drink  with. 
It  may  be  thought  that  I  am  prejudiced.  Perhaps 
I  am.     I  would  be  ashamed  of  myself  if  I  were  not. 

ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

Well,  as  I  was  saying,  we  got  our  mules  and 
horses,  after  an  hour  and  a  half  of  bargaining  with 
the  population  of  Annunciation,  and  started  sleepily 
up  the  mountain,  with  a  vagrant  at  each  mule's  tail 
who  pretended  to  be  driving  the  brute  along,  but  was 
really  holding  on  and  getting  himself  dragged  up  in- 
stead. I  made  slow  headway  at  first,  but  I  began  to 
get  dissatisfied  at  the  idea  of  paying  my  minion  five 
francs  to  hold  my  mule  back  by  the  tail  and  keep 
him  from  going  up  the  hill,  and  so  I  discharged  him. 

We  had  one  magnificent  picture  of  Naples  from  a 
high  point  on  the  mountainside.  We  saw  nothing 
but  the  gas-lamps,  of  course — two-thirds  of  a  circle, 
skirting  the  great  Bay — a  necklace  of  diamonds 
glinting  up  through  the  darkness  from  the  remote 
distance — less  brilliant  than  the  stars  overhead,  but 
more  softly,  richly  beautiful — and  over  all  the  great 
city  the  lights  crossed  and  recrossed  each  other  in 
many  and  many  a  sparkling  line  and  curve.  And 
back  of  the  town,  far  around  and  abroad  over  the 
miles  of  level  campagna,  were  scattered  rows,  and 
circles,  and  clusters  of  lights,  all  glowing  like  so  many 
gems,  and  marking  where  a  score  of  villages  were 
sleeping.  About  this  time,  the  fellow  who  was  hang- 
ing on  to  the  tail  of  the  horse  in  front  of  me  and 
practising  all  sorts  of  unnecessary  cruelty  upon  the 

19 


MARK    TWAIN 

animal,  got  kicked  some  fourteen  rods,  and  this  in- 
cident, together  with  the  fairy  spectacle  of  the  lights 
far  in  the  distance,  made  me  serenely  happy,  and  1 
was  glad  I  started  to  Vesuvius. 

ASCENT   OF   MOUNT   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

This  subject  will  be  excellent  matter  for  a  chap- 
ter, and  to-morrow  or  next  day  I  will  write  it. 


CHAPTER  III 

ASCENT   OF   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

SEE  Naples  and  die."  Well,  I  do  not  know 
that  one  would  necessarily  die  after  merely 
seeing  it,  but  to  attempt  to  live  there  might  turn  out 
a  little  differently.  To  see  Naples  as  we  saw  it  in 
the  early  dawTn  from  far  up  on  the  side  of  Vesuvius, 
is  to  see  a  picture  of  wonderful  beauty.  At  that 
distance  its  dingy  buildings  looked  white — and  so, 
rank  on  rank  of  balconies,  windows,  and  roofs,  they 
piled  themselves  up  from  the  blue  ocean  till  the 
colossal  castle  of  St.  Elmo  topped  the  grand  white 
pyramid  and  gave  the  picture  symmetry,  emphasis, 
and  completeness  And  when  its  lilies  turned  to 
roses — when  it  blushed  under  the  sun's  first  kiss — 
it  was  beautiful  beyond  all  description.  One  might 
well  say,  then,  "See  Naples  and  die."  The  frame 
of  the  picture  was  charming,  itself.  In  front,  the 
smooth  sea — a  vast  mosaic  of  many  colors;  the 
lofty  island  swimming  in  a  dreamy  haze  in  the  dis 
tance ;  at  our  end  of  the  city  the  stately  double  peak 
of  Vesuvius,  and  its  strong  black  ribs  and  seams  of 
lava  stretching  down  to  the  limitless  level  campagna 
— a  green  carpet  that  enchants  the  eye  and  leads  it 
on  and  on,  past  clusters  of  trees,  and  isolated 
houses,    and    snowy    villages,    until    it    shreds    out 

21 


MARK    TWAIN 

in  a  fringe  of  mist  and  general  vagueness  far  away. 
It  is  from  the  Hermitage,  there  on  the  side  of  Ve- 
suvius, that  one  should  "see  Naples  and  die." 

But  do  not  go  within  the  walls  and  look  at  it  in 
detail.  That  takes  away  some  of  the  romance  of  the 
thing.  The  people  are  filthy  in  their  habits,  and 
this  makes  filthy  streets  and  breeds  disagreeable 
sights  and  smells.  There  never  was  a  community 
so  prejudiced  against  the  cholera  as  these  Neapolitans 
are.  But  they  have  good  reason  to  be.  The  cholera 
generally  vanquishes  a  Neapolitan  when  it  seizes 
him,  because,  you  understand,  before  the  doctor 
can  dig  through  the  dirt  and  get  at  the  disease  the 
man  dies.  The  upper  classes  take  a  sea-bath  every 
day,  and  are  pretty  decent. 

The  streets  are  generally  about  wide  enough  for 
one  wagon,  and  how  they  do  swarm  with  people! 
It  is  Broadway  repeated  in  every  street,  in  every 
court,  in  every  alley!  Such  masses,  such  throngs, 
such  multitudes  of  hurrying,  bustling,  struggling 
humanity !  We  never  saw  the  like  of  it,  hardly  even 
in  New  York,  I  think.  There  are  seldom  any  side- 
walks, and  when  there  are,  they  are  not  often  wide 
enough  to  pass  a  man  on  without  caroming  on  him. 
So  everybody  walks  in  the  street — and  where  the 
street  is  wide  enough,  carriages  are  forever  dashing 
along.  Why  a  thousand  people  are  not  run  over 
and  crippled  every  day  is  a  mystery  that  no  man 
can  solve. 

But  if  there  is  an  eighth  wonder  in  the  world,  it 
must  be  the  dwelling-houses  of  Naples.  I  honestly 
believe  a  good  majority  of  them  are  a  hundred  feet 

22 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

high!  And  the  solid  brick  walls  are  seven  feet 
through.  You  go  up  nine  flights  of  stairs  before 
you  get  to  the  "first"  floor.  No,  not  nine,  but 
there  or  thereabouts.  There  is  a  little  bird-cage  of 
an  iron  railing  in  front  of  every  window  clear  away 
up,  up,  up,  among  the  eternal  clouds,  where  the 
roof  is,  and  there  is  always  somebody  looking  out  of 
every  window — people  of  ordinary  size  looking  out 
from  the  first  floor,  people  a  shade  smaller  from  the 
second,  people  that  look  a  little  smaller  yet  from 
the  third — and  from  thence  upward  they  grow 
smaller  and  smaller  by  a  regularly  graduated  dim- 
inution, till  the  folks  in  the  topmost  windows  seem 
more  like  birds  in  an  uncommonly  tall  martin-box 
than  anything  else.  The  perspective  of  one  of  these 
narrow  cracks  of  streets,  with  its  rows  of  tall  houses 
stretching  away  till  they  come  together  in  the  dis- 
tance like  railway-tracks;  its  clothes-lines  crossing 
over  at  all  altitudes  and  waving  their  bannered 
raggedness  over  the  swarms  of  people  below;  and 
the  white-dressed  women  perched  in  balcony  railings 
all  the  way  from  the  pavement  up  to  the  heavens — 
a  perspective  like  that  is  really  worth  going  into 
Neapolitan  details  to  see. 

ASCENT    OF   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

Naples,  with  its  immediate  suburbs,  contains  six 
hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  inhabitants,  but 
I  am  satisfied  it  covers  no  more  ground  than  an 
American  city  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand. 
It  reaches  up  into  the  air  infinitely  higher  than  three 
American   cities,   though,   and   there   is   where   the 

21 


MARK    TWAIN 

secret  of  it  lies.  I  will  observe  here,  in  passing, 
that  the  contrasts  between  opulence  and  poverty, 
and  magnificence  and  misery,  are  more  frequent  and 
more  striking  in  Naples  than  in  Paris  even.  One 
must  go  to  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  to  see  fashionable 
dressing,  splendid  equipages,  and  stunning  liveries, 
and  to  the  Faubourg  St.  Antoine  to  see  vice,  misery, 
hunger,  rags,  dirt — but  in  the  thoroughfares  of 
Naples  these  things  are  all  mixed  together.  Naked 
boys  of  nine  years  and  the  fancy-dressed  children  of 
luxury;  shreds  and  tatters,  and  brilliant  uniforms; 
jackass  carts  and  state  carriages;  beggars,  princes, 
and  bishops,  jostle  each  other  in  every  street.  At 
six  o'clock  every  evening,  all  Naples  turns  out  to 
drive  on  the  Riviera  di  Chiaja  (whatever  that  may 
mean) ;  and  for  two  hours  one  may  stand  there  and 
see  the  motliest  and  the  worst-mixed  procession  go 
by  that  ever  eyes  beheld.  Princes  (there  are  more 
princes  than  policemen  in  Naples — the  city  is  in- 
fested with  them) — princes  who  live  up  seven 
flights  of  stairs  and  don't  own  any  principalities, 
will  keep  a  carriage  and  go  hungry;  and  clerks, 
mechanics,  milliners,  and  strumpets  will  go  without 
their  dinners  and  squander  the  money  on  a  hack-ride 
in  the  Chiaja;  the  ragtag  and  rubbish  of  the  city 
stack  themselves  up,  to  the  number  of  twenty  or 
thirty,  on  a  rickety  little  go-cart  hauled  by  a  donkey 
not  much  bigger  than  a  cat,  and  they  drive  in  the 
Chiaja;  dukes  and  bankers,  in  sumptuous  carriages 
and  with  gorgeous  drivers  and  footmen,  turn  out, 
also,  and  so  the  furious  procession  goes.  For  two 
hours  rank  and  wealth,  and  obscurity  and  poverty, 

24 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

clatter  along  side  by  side  in  the  wild  procession, 
and  then  go  home  serene,  happy,  covered  with 
glory! 

I  was  looking  at  a  magnificent  marble  staircase  in 
the  King's  palace,  the  other  day,  which,  it  was  said, 
cost  five  million  francs,  and  I  suppose  it  did  cost 
half  a  million,  maybe.  I  felt  as  if  it  must  be  a  fine 
thing  to  live  in  a  country  where  there  was  such 
comfort  and  such  luxury  as  this.  And  then  I 
stepped  out  musing,  and  almost  walked  over  a  vaga- 
bond who  was  eating  his  dinner  on  the  curbstone — 
a  piece  of  bread  and  a  bunch  of  grapes.  When  I 
found  that  this  mustang  was  clerking  in  a  fruit 
establishment  (he  had  the  establishment  along  with 
him  in  a  basket),  at  two  cents  a  day,  and  that  he 
had  no  palace  at  home  where  he  lived,  I  lost  some 
of  my  enthusiasm  concerning  the  happiness  of  living 
in  Italy. 

This  naturally  suggests  to  me  a  thought  about 
wages  here.  Lieutenants  in  the  army  get  about  a 
dollar  a  day,  and  common  soldiers  a  couple  of  cents. 
I  only  know  one  clerk — he  gets  four  dollars  a  month. 
Printers  get  six  dollars  and  a  half  a  month,  but  I 
have  heard  of  a  foreman  who  gets  thirteen.  To 
be  growing  suddenly  and  violently  rich,  as  this  man 
is,  naturally  makes  him  a  bloated  aristocrat.  The 
airs  he  puts  on  are  insufferable. 

And,  speaking  of  wages,  reminds  me  of  prices  of 
merchandise.  In  Paris  you  pay  twelve  dollars  a 
dozen  for  Jouvin's  best  kid  gloves;  gloves  of  about 
as  good  quality  sell  here  at  three  or  four  dollars  a 
dozen.     You  pay  five  and  six  dollars  apiece  for  fine 

25 


MARK    TWAIN 

linen  shirts  in  Paris;  here  and  in  Leghorn  you  pay 
two  and  a  half.  In  Marseilles  you  pay  forty  dollars 
for  a  first-class  dress-coat  made  by  a  good  tailor, 
but  in  Leghorn  you  can  get  a  full-dress  suit  for  the 
same  money.  Here  you  get  handsome  business 
suits  at  from  ten  to  twenty  dollars,  and  in  Leghorn 
you  can  get  an  overcoat  for  fifteen  dollars  that  would 
cost  you  seventy  in  New  York.  Fine  kid  boots  are 
worth  eight  dollars  in  Marseilles  and  four  dollars 
here.  Lyons  velvets  rank  higher  in  America  than 
those  of  Genoa.  Yet  the  bulk  of  Lyons  velvets  you 
buy  in  the  States  are  made  in  Genoa  and  imported 
into  Lyons,  where  they  receive  the  Lyons  stamp 
and  are  then  exported  to  America.  You  can  buy 
enough  velvet  in  Genoa  for  twenty-five  dollars  to 
make  a  five-hundred-dollar  cloak  in  New  York — so 
the  ladies  tell  me.  Of  course,  these  things  bring  me 
back,  by  a  natural  and  easy  transition,  to  the 

ASCENT    OF   VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

And  thus  the  wonderful  Blue  Grotto  is  suggested 
to  me.  It  is  situated  on  the  island  of  Capri,  twenty- 
two  miles  from  Naples.  We  chartered  a  little 
steamer  and  went  out  there.  Of  course,  the  police 
boarded  us  and  put  us  through  a  health  examination, 
and  inquired  into  our  politics,  before  they  would  let 
us  land.  The  airs  these  little  insect  governments 
put  on  are  in  the  last  degree  ridiculous.  They  even 
put  a  policeman  on  board  of  our  boat  to  keep  an 
eye  on  us  as  long  as  we  were  in  the  Capri  dominions. 
They  thought  we  wanted  to  steal  the  grotto,  I  sup- 
pose.    It  was  worth  stealing.     The  entrance  to  the 

26 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

cave  is  four  feet  high  and  four  feet  wide,  and  is  in 
the  face  of  a  lofty  perpendicular  cliff — the  sea-wall. 
You  enter  in  small  boats — and  a  tight  squeeze  it  is, 
too.  You  cannot  go  in  at  all  when  the  tide  is  up. 
Once  within,  you  find  yourself  in  an  arched  cavern 
about  one  hundred  and  sixty  feet  long,  one  hundred 
and  twenty  wide,  and  about  seventy  high.  How 
deep  it  is  no  man  knows.  It  goes  down  to  the 
bottom  of  the  ocean.  The  waters  of  this  placid 
subterranean  lake  are  the  brightest,  loveliest  blue 
that  can  be  imagined.  They  are  as  transparent  as 
plate  -  glass,  and  their  coloring  would  shame  the 
richest  sky  that  ever  bent  over  Italy.  No  tint  could 
be  more  ravishing,  no  luster  more  superb.  Throw 
a  stone  into  the  water,  and  the  myriad  of  tiny  bub- 
bles that  are  created  flash  out  a  brilliant  glare  like 
blue  theatrical  fires.  Dip  an  oar,  and  its  blade  turns 
to  splendid  frosted  silver,  tinted  with  blue.  Let  a 
man  jump  in,  and  instantly  he  is  cased  in  an  armor 
more  gorgeous  than  ever  kingly  Crusader  wore. 

Then  we  went  to  Ischia,  but  I  had  already  been 
to  that  island  and  tired  myself  to  death  *  'resting" 
a  couple  of  days  and  studying  human  villainy,  with 
the  landlord  of  the  Grande  Sentinelle  for  a  model. 
So  we  went  to  Procida,  and  from  thence  to  Pozzuoli, 
where  St.  Paul  landed  after  he  sailed  from  Samos. 
I  landed  at  precisely  the  same  spot  where  St.  Paul 
landed,  and  so  did  Dan  and  the  others.  It  was  a 
remarkable  coincidence.  St.  Paul  preached  to  these 
people  seven  days  before  he  started  to  Rome. 

Nero's  Baths,  the  ruins  of  Baiae,  the  Temple  of 
Serapis;    Cumae,   where  the  Cumaean  Sibyl  inter- 

27 


MARK    TWAIN 

preted  the  oracles,  the  Lake  Agnano,  with  its  an- 
cient submerged  city  still  visible  far  down  in  its 
depths — these  and  a  hundred  other  points  of  interest 
we  examined  with  critical  imbecility,  but  the  Grotto 
of  the  Dog  claimed  our  chief  attention,  because  we 
had  heard  and  read  so  much  about  it.  Everybody 
has  written  about  the  Grotto  del  Cane  and  its  poison- 
ous vapors,  from  Pliny  down  to  Smith,  and  every 
tourist  has  held  a  dog  over  its  floor  by  the  legs  to 
test  the  capabilities  of  the  place.  The  dog  dies  in 
a  minute  and  a  half — a  chicken  instantly.  As  a 
general  thing,  strangers  who  crawl  in  there  to  sleep 
do  not  get  up  until  they  are  called.  And  then  they 
don't,  either.  The  stranger  that  ventures  to  sleep 
there  takes  a  permanent  contract.  I  longed  to  see 
this  grotto.  I  resolved  to  take  a  dog  and  hold  him 
myself;  suffocate  him  a  little,  and  time  him;  suffo- 
cate him  some  more,  and  then  finish  him.  We 
reached  the  grotto  about  three  in  the  afternoon,  and 
proceeded  at  once  to  make  the  experiments.  But 
now,  an  important  difficulty  presented  itself.  We 
had  no  dog. 

ASCENT    OF    VESUVIUS — CONTINUED 

At  the  Hermitage  we  were  about  fifteen  or  eight- 
een hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  and  thus  far  a 
portion  of  the  ascent  had  been  pretty  abrupt.  For 
the  next  two  miles  the  road  was  a  mixture — some- 
times the  ascent  was  abrupt  and  sometimes  it  was 
not;  but  one  characteristic  it  possessed  all  the  time, 
without  failure — without  modification — it  was  all 
uncompromisingly  and  unspeakably  infamous.     It 

2S 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

was  a  rough,  narrow  trail,  and  led  over  an  old  lava* 
flow — a  black  ocean  which  was  tumbled  into  a 
thousand  fantastic  shapes — a  wild  chaos  of  ruin, 
desolation,  and  barrenness — a  wilderness  of  billowy 
upheavals,  of  furious  whirlpools,  of  miniature  moun- 
tains rent  asunder — of  gnarled  and  knotted,  wrinkled 
and  twisted  masses  of  blackness  that  mimicked 
branching  roots,  great  vines,  trunks  of  trees,  all 
interlaced  and  mingled  together;  and  all  these  weird 
shapes,  all  this  turbulent  panorama,  all  this  stormy, 
far-stretching  waste  of  blackness,  with  its  thrilling 
suggestiveness  of  life,  of  action,  of  boiling,  surging, 
furious  motion,  was  petrified! — all  stricken  dead 
and  cold  in  the  instant  of  its  maddest  rioting! — 
fettered,  paralyzed,  and  left  to  glower  at  heaven  in 
impotent  rage  forevermore! 

Finally  we  stood  in  a  level,  narrow  valley  (a  valley 
that  had  been  created  by  the  terrific  march  of  some 
old-time  eruption)  and  on  either  hand  towered  the 
two  steep  peaks  of  Vesuvius.  The  one  we  had  to 
climb — the  one  that  contains  the  active  volcano — 
seemed  about  eight  hundred  or  one  thousand  feet 
high,  and  looked  almost  too  straight-up-and-down 
for  any  man  to  climb,  and  certainly  no  mule  could 
climb  it  with  a  man  on  his  back.  Four  of  these 
native  pirates  will  carry  you  to  the  top  in  a  sedan- 
chair,  if  you  wish  it,  but  suppose  they  were  to  slip 
and  let  you  fall, — is  it  likely  that  you  would  ever 
stop  rolling?  Not  this  side  of  eternity,  perhaps. 
We  left  the  mules,  sharpened  our  finger-nails,  and 
began  the  ascent  I  have  been  writing  about  so  long, 
at  twenty  minutes  to  six  in  the  morning.     The  path 

29 


MARK    TWAIN 

led  straight  up  a  rugged  sweep  of  loose  chunks  of 
pumice-stone,  and  for  about  every  two  steps  forward 
we  took,  we  slid  back  one.  It  was  so  excessively 
steep  that  we  had  to  stop,  every  fifty  or  sixty  steps, 
and  rest  a  moment.  To  see  our  comrades,  we  had 
to  look  very  nearly  straight  up  at  those  above  us, 
and  very  nearly  straight  down  at  those  below.  We 
stood  on  the  summit  at  last — it  had  taken  an  hour 
and  fifteen  minutes  to  make  the  trip. 

What  we  saw  there  was  simply  a  circular  crater — 
a  circular  ditch,  if  you  please — about  two  hundred 
feet  deep,  and  four  or  five  hundred  feet  wide,  whose 
inner  wall  was  about  half  a  mile  in  circumference. 
In  the  center  of  the  great  circus-ring  thus  formed 
was  a  torn  and  ragged  upheaval  a  hundred  feet  high, 
all  snowed  over  with  a  sulphur  crust  of  many  and 
many  a  brilliant  and  beautiful  color,  and  the  ditch 
inclosed  this  like  the  moat  of  a  castle,  or  surrounded 
it  as  a  little  river  does  a  little  island,  if  the  simile  is 
gaudy  in  the  extreme — all  mingled  together  in  the 
richest  confusion  were  red,  blue,  brown,  black, 
yellow,  white — I  do  not  know  that  there  was  a 
color,  or  shade  of  a  color,  or  combination  of  colors, 
unrepresented — and  when  the  sun  burst  through 
the  morning  mists  and  fired  this  tinted  magnificence, 
it  topped  imperial  Vesuvius  like  a  jeweled  crown ! 

The  crater  itself — the  ditch — was  not  so  varie- 
gated in  coloring,  but  yet,  in  its  softness,  richness, 
and  unpretentious  elegance,  it  was  more  charming, 
more  fascinating  to  the  eye.  There  was  nothing 
"loud"  about  its  well-bred  and  well-dressed  look. 
Beautiful?     One  could  stand  and  look  down  upon  it 

30 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

for  a  week  without  getting  tired  of  it.  It  had  the 
semblance  of  a  pleasant  meadow,  whose  slender 
grasses  and  whose  velvety  mosses  were  frosted  with 
a  shining  dust,  and  tinted  with  palest  green  that 
deepened  gradually  to  the  darkest  hue  of  the  orange 
leaf,  and  deepened  yet  again  into  gravest  brown, 
then  faded  into  orange,  then  into  brightest  gold,  and 
culminated  in  the  delicate  pink  of  a  new-blown  rose. 
Where  portions  of  the  meadow  had  sunk,  and  where 
other  portions  had  been  broken  up  like  an  ice-floe, 
the  cavernous  openings  of  the  one,  and  the  ragged 
upturned  edges  exposed  by  the  other,  were  hung 
with  a  lacework  of  soft-tinted  crystals  of  sulphur 
that  changed  their  deformities  into  quaint  shapes 
and  figures  that  were  full  of  grace  and  beauty. 

The  walls  of  the  ditch  were  brilliant  with  yellow 
banks  of  sulphur  and  with  lava  and  pumice-stone  of 
many  colors.  No  fire  was  visible  anywhere,  but 
gusts  of  sulphurous  steam  issued  silently  and  in- 
visibly from  a  thousand  little  cracks  and  fissures  in 
the  crater,  and  were  wafted  to  our  noses  with  every 
breeze.  But  so  long  as  we  kept  our  nostrils  buried 
in  our  handkerchiefs,  there  was  small  danger  of 
suffocation. 

Some  of  the  boys  thrust  long  slips  of  paper  down 
into  holes  and  set  them  on  fire,  and  so  achieved  the 
glory  of  lighting  their  cigars  by  the  flames  of  Ve- 
suvius, and  others  cooked  eggs  over  fissures  in  the 
rocks  and  were  happy. 

The  view  from  the  summit  would  have  been  superb 
but  for  the  fact  that  the  sun  could  only  pierce  the 
mists  at  long  intervals.     Thus  the  glimpses  we  had 

3i 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  the  grand  panorama  below  were  only  fitful  and 
unsatisfactory. 

THE    DESCENT 

The  descent  of  the  mountain  was  a  labor  of  only 
four  minutes.  Instead  of  stalking  down  the  rugged 
path  we  ascended,  we  chose  one  which  was  bedded 
knee-deep  in  loose  ashes,  and  plowed  our  way  with 
prodigious  strides  that  would  almost  have  shamed 
the  performance  of  him  of  the  seven-league  boots. 

The  Vesuvius  of  to-day  is  a  very  poor  affair  com- 
pared to  the  mighty  volcano  of  Kilauea,  in  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  but  I  am  glad  I  visited  it.  It  was 
well  worth  it. 

It  is  said  that  during  one  of  the  grand  eruptions 
of  Vesuvius  it  discharged  massy  rocks  weighing 
many  tons  a  thousand  feet  into  the  air,  its  vast  jets 
of  smoke  and  steam  ascended  thirty  miles  toward 
the  firmament,  and  clouds  of  its  ashes  were  wafted 
abroad  and  fell  upon  the  decks  of  ships  seven  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  at  sea !  I  wil  take  the  ashes  at 
a  moderate  distance,  if  any  one  will  take  the  thirty 
miles  of  smoke,  but  I  do  not  feel  able  to  take  a 
commanding  interest  in  the  whole  story  by  myself. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   BURIED   CITY   OF   POMPEII 

THEY  pronounce  it  Pom-pay-e.  I  always  had 
an  idea  that  you  went  down  into  Pompeii  with 
torches,  by  the  way  of  damp,  dark  stairways,  just 
as  you  do  in  silver-mines,  and  traversed  gloomy 
tunnels  with  lava  overhead  and  something  on  either 
hand  like  dilapidated  prisons  gouged  out  of  the  solid 
earth,  that  faintly  resembled  houses.  But  you  do 
nothing  of  the  kind.  Fully  one-half  of  the  buried 
city,  perhaps,  is  completely  exhumed  and  thrown 
open  freely  to  the  light  of  day;  and  there  stand  the 
long  rows  of  solidly  built  brick  houses  (roofless) 
just  as  they  stood  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  hot 
with  the  flaming  sun;  and  there  lie  their  floors, 
clean-swept,  and  not  a  bright  fragment  tarnished  or 
wanting  of  the  labored  mosaics  that  pictured  them 
with  the  beasts  and  birds  and  flowers  which  we 
copy  in  perishable  carpets  to-day;  and  there  are  the 
Venuses  and  Bacchuses  and  Adonises,  making  love 
and  getting  drunk  in  many-hued  frescoes  on  the 
walls  of  saloon  and  bedchamber;  and  there  are  the 
narrow  streets  and  narrower  sidewalks,  paved  with 
flags  of  good  hard  lava,  the  one  deeply  rutted  with 
the  chariot-wheels,  and  the  other  with  the  passing 
feet  of  the  Pompeiians   of  bygone   centuries;    and 

33 


MARK    TWAIN 

there  are  the  bake  shops,  the  temples,  the  halls  of 
justice,  the  baths,  the  theaters — all  clean-scraped 
and  neat,  and  suggesting  nothing  of  the  nature  of  a 
silver-mine  away  down  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth. 
The  broken  pillars  lying  about,  the  doorless  door- 
ways, and  the  crumbled  tops  of  the  wilderness  of 
walls,  were  wonderfully  suggestive  of  the  "burnt 
district"  in  one  of  our  cities,  and  if  there  had  been 
any  charred  timbers,  shattered  windows,  heaps  of 
debris,  and  general  blackness  and  smokiness  about 
the  place,  the  resemblance  would  have  been  perfect. 
But  no — the  sun  shines  as  brightly  down  on  old 
Pompeii  to-day  as  it  did  when  Christ  was  born  in 
Bethlehem,  and  its  streets  are  cleaner  a  hundred 
times  than  ever  Pompeiian  saw  them  in  her  prime. 
I  know  whereof  I  speak — for  in  the  great,  chief 
thoroughfares  (Merchant  Street  and  the  Street  of 
Fortune)  have  I  not  seen  with  my  own  eyes  how  for 
two  hundred  years  at  least  the  pavements  were  not 
repaired! — how  ruts  five  and  even  ten  inches  deep 
were  worn  into  the  thick  flagstones  by  the  chariot- 
wheels  of  generations  of  swindled  taxpayers?  And 
do  I  not  know  by  these  signs  that  street  commis- 
sioners of  Pompeii  never  attended  to  their  business, 
and  that  if  they  never  mended  the  pavements  they 
never  cleaned  them?  And,  besides,  is  it  not  the 
inborn  nature  of  street  commissioners  to  avoid  their 
duty  whenever  they  get  a  chance?  I  wish  I  knew 
the  name  of  the  last  one  that  held  office  in  Pompeii 
so  that  I  could  give  him  a  blast.  I  speak  with  feel- 
ing on  this  subject,  because  I  caught  my  foot  in  one 
of  these  ruts,  and  the  sadness  that  came  over  me 

34 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

when  I  saw  the  first  poor  skeleton,  with  ashes  and 
lava  sticking  to  it,  was  tempered  by  the  reflection 
that  maybe  that  party  was  the  street  commissioner. 

No — Pompeii  is  no  longer  a  buried  city.  It  is  a 
city  of  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  roofless  houses, 
and  a  tangled  maze  of  streets  where  one  could  easily 
get  lost,  without  a  guide,  and  have  to  sleep  in  some 
ghostly  palace  that  had  known  no  living  tenant  since 
that  awful  November  night  of  eighteen  centuries 
ago. 

We  passed  through  the  gate  w^hich  faces  the 
Mediterranean  (called  the  "Marine  Gate"),  and  by 
the  rusty,  broken  image  of  Minerva,  still  keeping 
tireless  watch  and  ward  over  the  possessions  it  was 
powerless  to  save,  and  went  up  a  long  street  and 
stood  in  the  broad  court  of  the  Forum  of  Justice. 
The  floor  was  level  and  clean,  and  up  and  down 
either  side  was  a  noble  colonnade  of  broken  pillars, 
with  their  beautiful  Ionic  and  Corinthian  columns 
scattered  about  them.  At  the  upper  end  were  the 
vacant  seats  of  the  judges,  and  behind  them  we 
descended  into  a  dungeon  where  the  ashes  and 
cinders  had  found  two  prisoners  chained  on  that 
memorable  November  night,  and  tortured  them  to 
death.  How  they  must  have  tugged  at  the  pitiless 
fetters  as  the  fierce  fires  surged  around  them! 

Then  we  lounged  through  many  and  many  a 
sumptuous  private  mansion  which  we  could  not  have 
entered  without  a  formal  invitation  in  incomprehen- 
sible Latin,  in  the  olden  time,  when  the  owners  lived 
there — and  we  probably  wouldn't  have  got  it. 
These  people  built  their  houses  a  good  deal  alike- 

35 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  floors  were  laid  in  fanciful  figures  wrought  in 
mosaics  of  many-colored  marbles.  At  the  thresh- 
old your  eyes  fall  upon  a  Latin  sentence  of  wel- 
come, sometimes,  or  a  picture  of  a  dog,  with  the 
legend,  "Beware  of  the  Dog,"  and  sometimes  a  pic- 
ture of  a  bear  or  a  faun  with  no  inscription  at  all. 
Then  you  enter  a  sort  of  vestibule,  where  they  used 
to  keep  the  hat-rack,  I  suppose ;  next  a  room  with  a 
large  marble  basin  in  the  midst  and  the  pipes  of  a 
fountain;  on  either  side  are  bedrooms;  beyond  the 
fountain  is  a  reception-room,  then  a  little  garden 
dining-room,  and  so  forth  and  so  on.  The  floors 
were  all  mosaic,  the  walls  were  stuccoed,  or  frescoed, 
or  ornamented  with  bas-reliefs,  and  here  and  there 
were  statues,  large  and  small,  and  little  fish-pools, 
and  cascades  of  sparkling  water  that  sprang  from 
secret  places  in  the  colonnade  of  handsome  pillars 
that  surrounded  the  court,  and  kept  the  flower-beds 
fresh  and  the  air  cool.  Those  Pompeiians  were  very 
luxurious  in  their  tastes  and  habits.  The  most 
exquisite  bronzes  we  have  seen  in  Europe  came 
from  the  exhumed  cities  of  Herculaneum  and  Pom- 
peii, and  also  the  finest  cameos  and  the  most  deli- 
cate engravings  on  precious  stones;  their  pictures, 
eighteen  or  nineteen  centuries  old,  are  often  much 
more  pleasing  than  the  celebrated  rubbish  of  the  old 
masters  of  three  centuries  ago.  They  were  well  up 
in  art.  From  the  creation  of  these  works  of  the 
first,  clear  up  to  the  eleventh  century,  art  seems 
hardly  to  have  existed  at  all — at  least  no  remnants 
of  it  are  left — and  it  was  curious  to  see  how  far  (in 
some  things,  at  any  rate)  these  old-time  pagans  ex- 

36 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

celled  the  remote  generations  of  masters  that  came 
after  them.  The  pride  of  the  world  in  sculptures 
seem  to  be  the  Laocoon  and  the  Dying  Gladiator 
in  Rome.  They  are  as  old  as  Pompeii,  were  dug 
from  the  earth  like  Pompeii;  but  their  exact  age  or 
who  made  them  can  only  be  conjectured.  But 
worn  and  cracked,  without  a  history,  and  with  the 
blemishing  stains  of  numberless  centuries  upon 
them,  they  still  mutely  mock  at  all  efforts  to  rival 
their  perfections. 

It  was  a  quaint  and  curious  pastime,  wandering 
through  this  old  silent  city  of  the  dead — lounging 
through  utterly  deserted  streets  where  thousands  and 
thousands  of  human  beings  once  bought  and  sold, 
and  walked  and  rode,  and  made  the  place  resound 
with  the  noise  and  confusion  of  traffic  and  pleasure. 
They  were  not  lazy.  They  hurried  in  those  days. 
We  had  evidence  of  that.  There  was  a  temple  on 
one  corner,  and  it  was  a  shorter  cut  to  go  between 
the  columns  of  that  temple  from  one  street  to  the 
other  than  to  go  around — and  behold,  that  pathway 
had  been  worn  deep  into  the  heavy  flagstone  floor 
of  the  building  by  generations  of  time-saving  feet! 
They  would  not  go  around  when  it  was  quicker  to 
go  through.     We  do  that  way  in  our  cities. 

Everywhere,  you  see  things  that  make  you  won- 
der how  old  these  old  houses  were  before  the  night 
of  destruction  came — things,  too,  which  bring  back 
those  long-dead  inhabitants  and  place  them  living 
before  your  eyes.  For  instance:  The  steps  (two 
feet  thick — lava  blocks)  that  lead  up  out  of  the 
school,  and  the  same  kind  of  steps  that  lead  up  into 

37 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  dress-circle  of  the  principal  theater,  are  almost 
worn  through!  For  ages  the  boys  hurried  out  of 
that  school,  and  for  ages  their  parents  hurried  into 
that  theater,  and  the  nervous  feet  that  have  been 
dust  and  ashes  for  .eighteen  centuries  have  left  their 
record  for  us  to  read  to-day.  I  imagined  I  could 
see  crowds  of  gentlemen  and  ladies  thronging  into 
the  theater,  with  tickets  for  secured  seats  in  their 
hands,  and  on  the  wall,  I  read  the  imaginary  plac- 
ard, in  infamous  grammar,  "Positively  No  Free 
List,  Except  Members  of  the  Press!"  Hanging 
about  the  doorway  (I  fancied)  were  slouchy  Pom- 
peiian  street-boys  uttering  slang  and  profanity,  and 
keeping  a  wary  eye  out  for  checks.  I  entered  the 
theater,  and  sat  down  in  one  of  the  long  rows  of 
stone  benches  in  the  dress-circle,  and  looked  at  the 
place  for  the  orchestra,  and  the  ruined  stage,  and 
around  at  the  wide  sweep  of  empty  boxes,  and 
thought  to  myself,  "This  house  won't  pay."  I  tried 
to  imagine  the  music  in  full  blast,  the  leader  of  the 
orchestra  beating  time,  and  the  "versatile"  So-and- 
so  (who  had  "just  returned  from  a  most  successful 
tour  in  the  provinces  to  play  his  last  and  farewell 
engagement  of  positively  six  nights  only,  in  Pompeii, 
previous  to  his  departure  for  Herculaneum")  charg- 
ing around  the  stage  and  piling  the  agony  moun- 
tains high — but  I  could  not  do  it  with  such  a  "house  " 
as  that;  those  empty  benches  tied  my  fancy  down 
to  full  reality.  I  said,  these  people  that  ought  to 
be  here  have  been  dead,  and  still,  and  moldering  to 
dust  for  ages  and  ages,  and  will  never  care  for  the 
trifles  and  follies  of  life  any  more  forever — "Owing 

38 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

to  circumstances,  etc.,  etc.,  there  will  not  be  any 
performance  to-night."  Close  down  the  curtain. 
Put  out  the  lights. 

And  so  I  turned  away  and  went  through  shop 
after  shop  and  store  after  store,  far  down  the  long 
street  of  the  merchants,  and  called  for  the  wares  of 
Rome  and  the  East,  but  the  tradesmen  were  gone, 
the  marts  were  silent,  and  nothing  was  left  but  the 
broken  jars  all  set  in  cement  of  cinders  and  ashes; 
the  wine  and  the  oil  that  once  had  filled  them  were 
gone  with  their  owners. 

In  a  bake  shop  was  a  mill  for  grinding  the  grain, 
and  the  furnaces  for  baking  the  bread;  and  they 
say  that  here,  in  the  same  furnaces,  the  exhumers 
of  Pompeii  found  nice,  well-baked  loaves  which  the 
baker  had  not  found  time  to  remove  from  the  ovens 
the  last  time  he  left  his  shop,  because  circumstances 
compelled  him  to  leave  in  such  a  hurry. 

In  one  house  (the  only  building  in  Pompeii  which 
no  woman  is  now  allowed  to  enter)  were  the  small 
rooms  and  short  beds  of  solid  masonry,  just  as  they 
were  in  the  old  times,  and  on  the  walls  were  pictures 
which  looked  almost  as  fresh  as  if  they  were  painted 
yesterday,  but  which  no  pen  could  have  the  hardi- 
hood to  describe;  and  here  and  there  were  Latin 
inscriptions — obscene  scintillations  of  wit,  scratched 
by  hands  that  possibly  were  uplifted  to  Heaven  for 
succor  in  the  midst  of  a  driving  storm  of  fire  before 
the  night  was  done. 

In  one  of  the  principal  streets  was  a  ponderous 
stone  tank,  and  a  water-spout  that  supplied  it,  and 
where  the  tired,  heated  toilers  from  the  Campagna 

39 


MARK    TWAIN 

used  to  rest  their  right  hands  when  they  bent  over 
to  put  their  lips  to  the  spout,  the  thick  stone  was 
worn  down  to  a  broad  groove  an  inch  or  two  deep. 
Think  of  the  countless  thousands  of  hands  that  had 
pressed  that  spot  in  the  ages  that  are  gone,  to  so 
reduce  a  stone  that  is  as  hard  as  iron! 

They  had  a  great  public  bulletin-board  in  Pompeii 
— a  place  where  announcements  for  gladiatorial 
combats,  elections,  and  such  things,  were  posted — 
not  on  perishable  paper,  but  carved  in  enduring 
stone.  One  lady,  who,  I  take  it,  was  rich  and  well 
brought  up,  advertised  a  dwelling  or  so  to  rent,  with 
baths  and  all  the  modern  improvements,  and  several 
hundred  shops,  stipulating  that  the  dwellings  should 
not  be  put  to  immoral  purposes.  You  can  find  out 
who  lived  in  many  a  house  in  Pompeii  by  the  carved 
stone  door-plates  affixed  to  them:  and  in  the  same 
way  you  can  tell  who*  they  were  that  occupy  the 
tombs.  Everywhere  around  are  things  that  reveai 
to  you  something  of  the  customs  and  history  of  this 
forgotten  people.  But  what  would  a  volcano  leave 
of  an  American  city,  if  it  once  rained  its  cinders  on 
it?     Hardly  a  sign  or  a  symbol  to  tell  its  story. 

In  one  of  these  long  Pompeiian  halls  the  skeleton 
of  a  man  was  found,  with  ten  pieces  of  gold  in  one 
hand  and  a  large  key  in  the  other.  He  had  seized 
his  money  and  started  toward  the  door,  but  the  fiery 
tempest  caught  him  at  the  very  threshold,  and  he 
sank  down  and  died.  One  more  minute  of  precious 
time  would  have  saved  him.  I  saw  the  skeletons  of 
a  man,  a  woman,  and  two  young  girls.  The  woman 
had  her  hands  spread  wide  apart,  as  if  in  mortal 

40 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

terror,  and  I  imagined  I  could  still  trace  upon  her 
shapeless  face  something  of  the  expression  of  wild 
despair  that  distorted  it  when  the  heavens  rained 
fire  in  these  streets,  so  many  ages  ago.  The  girls 
and  the  man  lay  with  their  faces  upon  their  arms, 
as  if  they  had  tried  to  shield  them  from  the  envelop- 
ing cinders.  In  one  apartment  eighteen  skeletons 
were  found,  all  in  sitting  postures,  and  blackened 
places  on  the  walls  still  mark  their  shapes  and  show 
their  attitudes,  like  shadows.  One  of  them,  a  wom- 
an, still  wore  upon  her  skeleton  throat  a  necklace, 
with  her  name  engraved  upon  it — Julie  di  Diomede. 

But  perhaps  the  most  poetical  thing  Pompeii  has 
yielded  to  modern  research,  was  that  grand  figure  of 
a  Roman  soldier,  clad  in  complete  armor;  who,  true 
to  his  duty,  true  to  his  proud  name  of  a  soldier  of 
Rome,  and  full  of  the  stern  courage  which  had  given 
to  that  name  its  glory,  stood  to  his  post  by  the  city 
gate,  erect  and  unflinching,  till  the  hell  that  raged 
around  him  burned  out  the  dauntless  spirit  it  could 
not  conquer. 

We  never  read  of  Pompeii  but  we  think  of  that 
soldier;  we  cannot  write  of  Pompeii  without  the 
natural  impulse  to  grant  to  him  the  mention  he  so 
well  deserves.  Let  us  remember  that  he  was  a  soldier 
— not  a  policeman — and  so,  praise  him.  Being  a  sol- 
dier, he  stayed — because  the  warrior  instinct  forbade 
him  to  fly.  Had  he  been  a  policeman  he  would  have 
stayed,  also — because  he  would  have  been  asleep. 

There  are  not  half  a  dozen  flights  of  stairs  in  Pom- 
peii, and  no  other  evidences  that  the  houses  were 
more  than  one  story  high.     The  people  did  not  live 

41 


MARK    TWAIN 

in  the  clouds,  as  do  the  Venetians,  the  Genoese 
and  Neapolitans  of  to-day. 

We  came  out  from  under  the  solemn  mysteries  of 
this  city  of  the  Venerable  Past — this  city  which  per- 
ished, with  all  its  old  ways  and  its  quaint  old  fashions 
about  it,  remote  centuries  ago,  when  the  Disciples 
were  preaching  the  new  religion,  which  is  as  old  as 
the  hills  to  us  now — and  went  dreaming  among  the 
trees  that  grow  over  acres  and  acres  of  its  still  buried 
streets  and  squares,  till  a  shrill  whistle  and  the  cry 
of  "All  aboard — last  train  for  Naples!'1  woke  me 
up  and  reminded  me  that  I  belonged  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  was  not  a  dusty  mummy,  caked 
with  ashes  and  cinders,  eighteen  hundred  years  old. 
The  transition  was  startling.  The  idea  of  a  railroad- 
train  actually  running  to  old  dead  Pompeii,  and 
whistling  irreverently,  and  calling  for  passengers  in 
the  most  bustling  and  businesslike  way,  was  as 
strange  a  thing  as  one  could  imagine,  and  as  unpo- 
etical  and  disagreeable  as  it  was  strange. 

Compare  the  cheerful  life  and  the  sunshine  of  this 
day  with  the  horrors  the  younger  Pliny  saw  here, 
the  9th  of  November,  A.D.  79,  when  he  was  so 
bravely  striving  to  remove  his  mother  out  of  reach 
of  harm,  while  she  begged  him,  with  all  a  mother's 
unselfishness,  to  leave  her  to  perish  and  save  himself. 

By  this  time  the  murky  darkness  had  so  increased  that  one 
^night  have  believed  himself  abroad  in  a  black  and  moonless 
Slight,  or  in  a  chamber  where  all  the  lights  had  been  extinguished. 
On  every  hand  was  heard  the  complaints  of  women,  the  wailing 
of  children,  and  the  cries  of  men.  One  called  his  father,  another 
his  son,  ap-  another  his  wife,  and  only  by  their  voices  could 

42 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

they  know  each  other.  Many  in  their  despair  begged  that  death 
would  come  and  end  their  distress. 

Some  implored  the  gods  to  succor  them,  and  some  believed 
that  this  night  was  the  last,  the  eternal  night  which  should 
engulf  the  universe! 

Even  so  it  seemed  to  me — and  I  consoled  myself  for  the  coming 
death  with  the  reflection:  Behold!  the  World  is  passing  away! 

After  browsing  among  the  stately  ruins  of  Rome, 
of  Baiae,  of  Pompeii,  and  after  glancing  down  the 
long  marble  ranks  of  battered  and  nameless  imperial 
heads  that  stretch  down  the  corridors  of  the  Vatican, 
one  thing  strikes  me  with  a  force  it  never  had  be- 
fore :  the  unsubstantial,  unlasting  character  of  fame. 
Men  lived  long  lives,  in  the  olden  time,  and  struggled 
feverishly  through  them,  toiling  like  slaves,  in  ora- 
tory, in  generalship,  or  in  literature,  and  then  laid 
them  down  and  died,  happy  in  the  possession  of  an 
enduring  history  and  a  deathless  name.  Well,  twenty 
little  centuries  flutter  away,  and  what  is  left  of  these 
things  ?  A  crazy  inscription  on  a  block  of  stone,  which 
snuffy  antiquaries  bother  over  and  tangle  up  and  make 
nothing  out  of  but  a  bare  name  (which  they  spell  wrong) 
— no  history,  no  tradition,  no  poetry — nothing  that 
can  give  it  even  a  passing  interest.  What  may  be  left 
of  General  Grant's  great  name  forty  centuries  hence? 
This — in  the  Encyclopedia  for  A.D.  5868,  possibly. 

Uriah  S.  (or  Z.)  Graunt — popular  poet  of  ancient  times  in 
the  Aztec  provinces  of  the  United  States  of  British  America. 
Some  authors  say  flourished  about  A.D.  742;  but  the  learned 
Ah-ah  Foo-foo  states  that  he  was  a  contemporary  of  Scharkspyre, 
the  English  poet,  and  flourished  about  A.D.  1328,  some  three 
centuries  after  the  Trojan  war  instead  of  before  it.  He  wrote 
"  Rock  me  to  Sleep,  Mother." 

These  thoughts  sadden  me.     I  will  to  bed. 

43 


CHAPTER  V 

HOME,  again!  For  the  first  time,  in  many 
weeks,  the  ship's  entire  family  met  and  shook 
hands  on  the  quarter-deck.  They  had  gathered 
from  many  points  of  the  compass  and  from  many 
lands,  but  not  one  was  missing;  there  was  no  tale 
of  sickness  or  death  among  the  flock  to  dampen  the 
pleasure  of  the  reunion.  Once  more  there  was  a 
full  audience  on  deck  to  listen  to  the  sailors'  chorus 
as  they  got  the  anchor  up,  and  to  wave  an  adieu  to 
the  land  as  we  sped  away  from  Naples. 

The  seats  were  full  at  dinner  again,  the  domino 
parties  were  complete,  and  the  life  and  bustle  on 
the  upper  deck  in  the  fine  moonlight  at  night  was 
like  old  times — old  times  that  had  been  gone  weeks 
only,  but  yet  they  were  weeks  so  crowded  with  inci- 
dent, adventure,  and  excitement,  that  they  seemed 
almost  like  years.  There  was  no  lack  of  cheerful- 
ness on  board  the  Quaker  City.  For  once,  her  title 
was  a  misnomer. 

At  seven  in  the  evening,  with  the  western  horizon 
all  golden  from  the  sunken  sun,  and  specked  with 
distant  ships,  the  full  moon  sailing  high  overhead, 
the  dark  blue  of  the  sea  under  foot,  and  a  strange 
sort  of  twilight  affected  by  all  these  different  lights 
and  colors  around  us  and  about  us,  we  sighted  superb 
Stromboli.     With  what  majesty  the  monarch  held 

44 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

his  lonely  state  above  the  level  sea!  Distance 
clothed  him  in  a  purple  gloom,  and  added  a  veil  of 
shimmering  mist  that  so  softened  his  rugged  features 
that  we  seemed  to  see  him  through  a  web  of  silver 
gauze.  His  torch  was  out ;  his  fires  were  smoldering ; 
a  tall  column  of  smoke  that  rose  up  and  lost  itself 
in  the  growing  moonlight  was  all  the  sign  he  gave 
that  he  was  a  living  Autocrat  of  the  Sea  and  not  the 
specter  of  a  dead  one. 

At  two  in  the  morning  we  swept  through  the 
Straits  of  Messina,  and  so  bright  was  the  moonlight 
that  Italy  on  the  one  hand  and  Sicily  on  the  other 
seemed  almost  as  distinctly  visible  as  though  we 
looked  at  them  from  the  middle  of  a  street  we  were 
traversing.  The  city  of  Messina,  milk-like,  and 
starred  and  spangled  all  over  with  gaslights,  was  a 
fairy  spectacle.  A  great  party  of  us  were  on  deck 
smoking  and  making  a  noise,  and  waiting  to  see 
famous  Scylla  and  Charybdis.  And  presently  the 
Oracle  stepped  out  with  his  eternal  spy-glass  and 
squared  himself  on  the  deck  like  another  Colossus 
of  Rhodes.  It  was  a  surprise  to  see  him  abroad  at 
such  an  hour.  Nobody  supposed  he  cared  anything 
about  an  old  fable  like  that  of  Scylla  and  Charybdis. 
One  of  the  boys  said: 

"Hello,  doctor,  what  are  you  doing  up  here  at 
this  time  of  night? — What  do  you  want  to  see  this 
place  for?" 

"What  do  I  want  to  see  this  place  for?  Young 
man,  little  do  you  know  me,  or  you  wouldn't  ask 
such  a  question.  I  wish  to  see  all  the  places  that's 
mentioned  in  the  Bible." 

45 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Stuff!    This  place  isn't  mentioned  in  the  Bible." 

"It  ain't  mentioned  in  the  Bible! — this  place 
ain't — well  now,  what  place  is  this,  since  you  know 
so  much  about  it?" 

"Why  it's  Scylla  and  Charybdis." 

"Scylla  and  Cha — confound  it,  I  thought  it  was 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah!" 

And  he  closed  up  his  glass  and  went  below.  The 
above  is  the  ship  story.  Its  plausibility  is  marred 
a  little  by  the  fact  that  the  Oracle  was  not  a  biblical 
student,  and  did  not  spend  much  of  his  time  instruct- 
ing himself  about  Scriptural  localities. — They  say  the 
Oracle  complains,  in  this  hot  weather,  lately,  that 
the  only  beverage  in  the  ship  that  is  passable,  is  the 
butter.  He  did  not  mean  butter,  of  course,  but  in- 
asmuch as  that  article  remains  in  a  melted  state  now 
since  we  are  out  of  ice,  it  is  fair  to  give  him  the  credit 
of  getting  one  long  word  in  the  right  place,  anyhow, 
for  once  in  his  life.  He  said,  in  Rome,  that  the 
Pope  was  a  noble-looking  old  man,  but  he  never  did 
think  much  of  his  Iliad. 

We  spent  one  pleasant  day  skirting  along  the  Isles 
of  Greece.  They  are  very  mountainous.  Their 
prevailing  tints  are  gray  and  brown,  approaching 
to  red.  Little  white  villages,  surrounded  by  trees, 
nestle  in  the  valleys  or  roost  upon  the  lofty  perpen- 
dicular sea-walls. 

We  had  one  fine  sunset — a  rich  carmine  flush 
that  suffused  the  western  sky  and  cast  a  ruddy  glow 
far  over  the  sea.  Fine  sunsets  seem  to  be  rare  in 
this  part  of  the  world — or  at  least,  striking  ones. 
They  are  soft,  sensuous,  lovely — they  are  exquisite, 

46 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

refined,  effeminate,  but  we  have  seen  no  sunsets  here 
yet  like  the  gorgeous  conflagrations  that  flame  in  the 
track  of  the  sinking  sun  in  our  high  northern  lati- 
tudes. 

But  what  were  sunsets  to  us,  with  the  wild  excite- 
ment upon  us  of  approaching  the  most  renowned  of 
cities!  What  cared  we  for  outward  visions,  when 
Agamemnon,  Achilles,  and  a  thousand  other  heroes 
of  the  great  Past  were  marching  in  ghostly  procession 
through  our  fancies  ?  What  were  sunsets  to  us,  who 
were  about  to  live  and  breathe  and  walk  in  actual 
Athens;  yea,  and  go  far  down  into  the  dead  centuries 
and  bid  in  person  for  the  slaves,  Diogenes  and  Plato, 
in  the  public  market-place,  or  gossip  with  the  neigh- 
bors about  the  siege  of  Troy  or  the  splendid  deeds 
of  Marathon?     We  scorned  to  consider  sunsets. 

We  arrived,  and  entered  the  ancient  harbor  of  the 
Piraeus  at  last.  We  dropped  anchor  within  half  a 
mile  of  the  village.  Away  off,  across  the  undulat- 
ing Plain  of  Attica,  could  be  seen  a  little  square- 
topped  hill  with  a  something  on  it,  which  our  glass- 
es soon  discovered  to  be  the  ruined  edifices  of  the 
citadel  of  the  Athenians,  and  most  prominent  among 
them  loomed  the  venerable  Parthenon.  So  ex- 
quisitely clear  and  pure  is  this  wonderful  atmosphere 
that  every  column  of  the  noble  structure  was  discern- 
ible through  the  telescope,  and  even  the  smaller  ruins 
about  it  assumed  some  semblance  of  shape.  This 
at  a  distance  of  five  or  six  miles.  In  the  valley, 
near  the  Acropolis  (the  square-topped  hill  before 
spoken  of),  Athens  itself  could  be  vaguely  made  out 
with  an  ordinary  lorgnette.    Everybody  was  anxious 

47 


MARK    TWAIN 

to  get  ashore  and  visit  these  classic  localities  as 
quickly  as  possible.  No  land  we  had  yet  seen  had 
aroused  such  universal  interest  among  the  passen- 
gers. 

But  bad  news  came.  The  commandant  of  the 
Piraeus  came  in  his  boat,  and  said  we  must  either 
depart  or  else  get  outside  the  harbor  and  remain  im- 
prisoned in  our  ship,  under  rigid  quarantine,  for 
eleven  days !  So  we  took  up  the  anchor  and  moved 
outside,  to  lie  a  dozen  hours  or  so,  taking  in  sup- 
plies, and  then  sail  for  Constantinople.  It  was  the 
bitterest  disappointment  we  had  yet  experienced. 
To  lie  a  whole  day  in  sight  of  the  Acropolis,  and  yet 
be  obliged  to  go  away  without  visiting  Athens !  Dis- 
appointment was  hardly  a  strong  enough  word  to 
describe  the  circumstances. 

All  hands  were  on  deck,  all  the  afternoon,  with 
books  and  maps  and  glasses,  trying  to  determine 
which  "narrow  rocky  ridge"  was  the  Areopagus, 
which  sloping  hill  the  Pnyx,  which  elevation  the 
Museum  Hill,  and  so  on.  And  we  got  things  con- 
fused. Discussion  became  heated,  and  party  spirit 
ran  high.  Church-members  were  gazing  with  emo- 
tion upon  a  hill  which  they  said  was  the  one  St. 
Paul  preached  from,  and  another  faction  claimed 
that  that  hill  was  Hymettus,  and  another  that  it  was 
Pentelicon!  After  all  the  trouble,  we  could  be  cer- 
tain of  only  one  thing — the  square-topped  hill  was 
the  Acropolis,  and  the  grand  ruin  that  crowned  it 
was  the  Parthenon,  whose  picture  we  knew  in  in- 
fancy in  the  school-books. 

We  inquired  of  everybody  who  came  near  the 

48  ' 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ship,  whether  there  were  guards  in  the  Piraeus, 
whether  they  were  strict,  what  the  chances  were 
of  capture  should  any  of  us  slip  ashore,  and  in  case 
any  of  us  made  the  venture  and  were  caught,  what 
would  be  probably  done  to  us?  The  answers  were 
discouraging:  There  was  a  strong  guard  or  police 
force ;  the  Piraeus  was  a  small  town,  and  any  stranger 
seen  in  it  would  surely  attract  attention — capture 
would  be  certain.  The  commandant  said  the  pun- 
ishment would  be  "heavy";  when  asked  "How 
heavy?"  he  said  it  would  be  "very  severe" — that 
was  all  we  could  get  out  of  him. 

At  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  when  most  of  the 
ship's  company  were  abed,  four  of  us  stole  softly 
ashore  in  a  small  boat,  a  clouded  moon  favoring  the 
enterprise,  and  started  two  and  two,  and  far  apart, 
over  a  low  hill,  intending  to  go  clear  around  the 
Piraeus,  out  of  the  range  of  its  police.  Picking  our 
way  so  stealthily  over  that  rocky,  nettle-grown 
eminence,  made  me  feel  a  good  deal  as  if  I  were  on 
my  way  somewhere  to  steal  something.  My  imme- 
diate comrade  and  I  talked  in  an  undertone  about 
quarantine  laws  and  their  penalties,  but  we  found 
nothing  cheering  in  the  subject.  I  was  posted. 
Only  a  few  days  before,  I  was  talking  with  our  cap- 
tain, and  he  mentioned  the  case  of  a  man  who  swam 
ashore  from  a  quarantined  ship  somewhere,  and  got 
imprisoned  six  months  for  it;  and  when  he  was  in 
Genoa  a  few  years  ago,  a  captain  of  a  quarantined 
ship  went  in  his  boat  to  a  departing  ship,  which  was 
already  outside  of  the  harbor,  and  put  a  letter  on 
board  to  be  taken  to  his  family,  and  the  authorities 

49 


MARK    TWAIN 

imprisoned  him  three  months  for  it,  and  then  con- 
ducted him  and  his  ship  fairly  to  sea,  and  warned 
him  never  to  show  himself  in  that  port  again  while 
he  lived.  This  kind  of  conversation  did  no  good, 
further  than  to  give  a  sort  of  dismal  interest  to  our 
quarantine-breaking  expedition,  and  so  we  dropped 
it.  We  made  the  entire  circuit  of  the  town  without 
seeing  anybody  but  one  man,  who  stared  at  us  curi- 
ously, but  said  nothing,  and  a  dozen  persons  asleep 
on  the  ground  before  their  doors,  whom  we  walked 
among  and  never  woke — but  we  woke  up  dogs 
enough,  in  all  conscience — we  always  had  one  or 
two  barking  at  our  heels,  and  several  times  we  had 
as  many  as  ten  and  twelve  at  once.  They  made  such 
a  preposterous  din  that  persons  aboard  our  ship  said 
they  could  tell  how  we  were  progressing  for  a  long 
time,  and  where  we  were,  by  the  barking  of  the 
dogs.  The  clouded  moon  still  favored  us.  When 
we  had  made  the  whole  circuit,  and  were  passing 
among  the  houses  on  the  further  side  of  the  town, 
the  moon  came  out  splendidly,  but  we  no  longer 
feared  the  light.  As  we  approached  a  well,  near  a 
house,  to  get  a  drink,  the  owner  merely  glanced  at 
us  and  went  within.  He  left  the  quiet,  slumbering 
town  at  our  mercy.  I  record  it  here  proudly,  that 
we  didn't  do  anything  to  it. 

Seeing  no  road,  we  took  a  tall  hill  to  the  left  of 
the  distant  Acropolis  for  a  mark,  and  steered  straight 
for  it  over  all  obstructions,  and  over  a  little  rougher 
piece  of  country  than  exists  anywhere  else  outside 
of  the  state  of  Nevada,  perhaps.  Part  of  the  way  it 
was  covered  with  small,  loose  stones — we  trod  on  six 

50 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

at  a  time,  and  they  all  rolled.  Another  part  of  it 
was  dry,  loose,  newly  plowed  ground.  Still  another 
part  of  it  was  a  long  stretch  of  low  grape  vines, 
which  were  tanglesome  and  troublesome,  and  which 
we  took  to  be  brambles.  The  Attic  Plain,  barring 
the  grape  vines,  was  a  barren,  desolate,  unpoetical 
waste — I  wonder  what  it  was  in  Greece's  Age  of 
Glory,  five  hundred  years  before  Christ  ? 

In  the  neighborhood  of  one  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, when  we  were  heated  with  fast  walking  and 
parched  with  thirst,  Denny  exclaimed,  "Why,  these 
weeds  are  grape  vines!"  and  in  five  minutes  we 
had  a  score  of  bunches  of  large,  white,  delicious 
grapes,  and  were  reaching  down  for  more  when 
a  dark  shape  rose  mysteriously  up  out  of  the 
shadows  beside  us  and  said  "Ho!"  And  so  we 
left. 

In  ten  minutes  more  we  struck  into  a  beautiful 
road,  and  unlike  some  others  we  had  stumbled  upon 
at  intervals,  it  led  in  the  right  direction.  We  fol- 
lowed it.  It  was  broad  and  smooth  and  white — 
handsome  and  in  perfect  repair,  and  shaded  on  both 
sides  for  a  mile  or  so  with  single  ranks  of  trees,  and 
also  with  luxuriant  vineyards.  Twice  we  entered 
and  stole  grapes,  and  the  second  time  somebody 
shouted  at  us  from  some  invisible  place.  Where- 
upon we  left  again.  We  speculated  in  grapes  no 
more  on  that  side  of  Athens. 

Shortly  we  came  upon  an  ancient  stone  aqueduct, 
built  upon  arches,  and  from  that  time  forth  we  had 
ruins  all  about  us — we  were  approaching  our  jour- 
ney's end.     We  could  not  see  the  Acropolis  now  or 

51 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  high  hill,  either,  and  I  wanted  to  follow  the  road 
till  we  were  abreast  of  them,  but  the  others  overruled 
me,  and  we  toiled  laboriously  up  the  stony  hill  im- 
mediately in  our  front — and  from  its  summit  saw 
another — climbed  it  and  saw  another!  It  was  an 
hour  of  exhausting  work.  Soon  we  came  upon  a 
row  of  open  graves,  cut  in  the  solid  rock — (for  a 
while  one  of  them  served  Socrates  for  a  prison) — 
we  passed  around  the  shoulder  of  the  hill,  and  the 
citadel,  in  all  its  ruined  magnificence,  burst  upon 
us !  We  hurried  across  the  ravine  and  up  a  winding 
road,  and  stood  on  the  old  Acropolis,  with  the  pro- 
digious walls  of  the  citadel  towering  above  our 
heads.  We  did  not  stop  to  inspect  their  massive 
blocks  of  marble,  or  measure  their  height,  or  guess 
at  their  extraordinary  thickness,  but  passed  at  once 
through  a  great  arched  passage  like  a  railway -tunnel, 
and  went  straight  to  the  gate  that  leads  to  the 
ancient  temples.  It  was  locked!  So,  after  all,  it 
seemed  that  we  were  not  to  see  the  great  Parthenon 
face  to  face.  We  sat  down  and  held  a  council  of 
war.  Result:  The  gate  was  only  a  flimsy  structure 
of  wood — we  would  break  it  down.  It  seemed  like 
desecration,  but  then  we  had  traveled  far,  and  our 
necessities  were  urgent.  We  could  not  hunt  up 
guides  and  keepers — we  must  be  on  the  ship  before 
daylight.  So  we  argued.  This  was  all  very  fine, 
but  when  we  came  to  break  the  gate,  we  could  not 
do  it.  We  moved  around  an  angle  of  the  wall  and 
found  a  low  bastion — eight  feet  high  without — ten 
or  twelve  within.  Denny  prepared  to  scale  it,  and 
we  got  ready  to  follow.     By  dint  of  hard  scrambling 

52 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

he  finally  straddled  the  top,  but  some  loose  stones 
crumbled  away  and  fell  with  a  crash  into  the  court 
within.  There  was  instantly  a  banging  of  doors  and 
a  shout.  Denny  dropped  from  the  wall  in  a  twink- 
ling, and  we  retreated  in  disorder  to  the  gate. 
Xerxes  took  that  mighty  citadel  four  hundred  and 
eighty  years  before  Christ,  when  his  five  millions  of 
soldiers  and  camp-followers  followed  him  to  Greece, 
and  if  we  four  Americans  could  have  remained  un- 
molested five  minutes  longer,  we  would  have  taken 
it  too. 

The  garrison  had  turned  out — four  Greeks.  We 
clamored  at  the  gate,  and  they  admitted  us.  [Brib- 
ery and  corruption.] 

We  crossed  a  large  court,  entered  a  great  door, 
and  stood  upon  a  pavement  of  purest  white  marble, 
deeply  wrorn  by  footprints.  Before  us,  in  the  flood- 
ing moonlight,  rose  the  noblest  ruins  we  had  ever 
looked  upon — the  Propylaea;  a  small  temple  of 
Minerva;  the  Temple  of  Hercules,  and  the  grand 
Parthenon.  [We  got  these  names  from  the  Greek 
guide,  who  didn't  seem  to  know  more  than  seven 
men  ought  to  know.]  These  edifices  were  all  built 
of  the  whitest  Pentelic  marble,  but  have  a  pinkish 
stain  upon  them  now.  Where  any  part  is  broken, 
however,  the  fracture  looks  like  fine  loaf-sugar.  Six 
caryatides,  or  marble  women,  clad  in  flowing  robes, 
support  the  portico  of  the  Temple  of  Hercules,  but 
the  porticoes  and  colonnades  of  the  other  structures 
are  formed  of  massive  Doric  and  Ionic  pillars,  whose 
flutings  and  capitals  are  still  measurably  perfect, 
notwithstanding  the  centuries  that  have  gone  over 

53 


MARK    TWAIN 

them  and  the  sieges  they  have  suffered.  The  Par- 
thenon, originally,  was  two  hundred  and  twenty-six 
feet  long,  one  hundred  wide,  and  seventy  high,  and 
had  two  rows  of  great  columns,  eight  in  each,  at 
either  end,  and  single  rows  of  seventeen  each  down 
the  sides,  and  was  one  of  the  most  graceful  and 
beautiful  edifices  ever  erected. 

Most  of  the  Parthenon's  imposing  columns  are 
still  standing,  but  the  roof  is  gone.  It  was  a  perfect 
building  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  when  a 
shell  dropped  into  the  Venetian  magazine  stored 
here,  and  the  explosion  which  followed  wrecked  and 
unroofed  it.  I  remember  but  little  about  the  Par- 
thenon, and  I  have  put  in  one  or  two  facts  and 
figures  for  the  use  of  other  people  with  short  mem- 
ories.    Got  them  from  the  guide-book. 

As  we  wandered  thoughtfully  down  the  marble- 
paved  length  of  this  stately  temple,  the  scene  about 
us  was  strangely  impressive.  Here  and  there,  in 
lavish  profusion,  were  gleaming  white  statues  of  men 
and  women,  propped  against  blocks  of  marble,  some 
of  them  armless,  some  without  legs,  others  headless 
— but  all  looking  mournful  in  the  moonlight,  and 
startlingly  human!  They  rose  up  and  confronted 
the  midnight  intruder  on  every  side — they  stared  at 
him  with  stony  eyes  from  unlooked-for  nooks  and 
recesses ;  they  peered  at  him  over  fragmentary  heaps 
far  down  the  desolate  corridors;  they  barred  his 
way  in  the  midst  of  the  broad  forum,  and  solemnly 
pointed  with  handless  arms  the  way  from  the  sacred 
fane;  and  through  the  roofless  temple  the  moon 
looked  down,  and  banded  the  floor  and  darkened  the 

54 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

scattered  fragments  and  broken  statues  with  the 
slanting  shadows  of  the  columns. 

What  a  world  of  ruined  sculpture  was  about  us! 
Set  up  in  rows — stacked  up  in  piles — scattered 
broadcast  over  the  wide  area  of  the  Acropolis — 
were  hundreds  of  crippled  statues  of  all  sizes  and  of 
the  most  exquisite  workmanship ;  and  vast  fragments 
of  marble  that  once  belonged  to  the  entablatures, 
covered  with  bas-reliefs  representing  battles  and 
sieges,  ships  of  war  with  three  and  four  tiers  of 
oars,  pageants  and  processions — everything  one 
could  think  of.  History  says  that  the  temples  of 
the  Acropolis  were  filled  with  the  noblest  works  of 
Praxiteles  and  Phidias,  and  of  many  a  great  master 
in  sculpture  besides — and  surely  these  elegant  frag- 
ments attest  it. 

We  walked  out  into  the  grass-grown,  fragment- 
strewn  court  beyond  the  Parthenon.  It  startled  us, 
every  now  and  then,  to  see  a  stony  white  face  stare 
suddenly  up  at  us  out  of  the  grass  with  its  dead 
eyes.  The  place  seemed  alive  with  ghosts.  I  half 
expected  to  see  the  Athenian  heroes  of  twenty 
centuries  ago  glide  out  of  the  shadows  and  steal 
into  the  old  temple  they  knew  so  well  and  regarded 
with  such  boundless  pride. 

The  full  moon  was  riding  high  in  the  cloudless 
heavens  now.  We  sauntered  carelessly  and  unthink- 
ingly to  the  edge  of  the  lofty  battlements  of  the 
citadel,  and  looked  down — a  vision!  And  such  a 
vision!  Athens  by  moonlight!  The  prophet  that 
thought  the  splendors  of  the  New  Jerusalem  were 
revealed  to  him,  surely  saw  this  instead!     It  lay  in 

55 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  level  plain  right  under  our  feet — all  spread 
abroad  like  a  picture — and  we  looked  down  upon  it 
as  we  might  have  looked  from  a  balloon.  We  saw 
no  semblance  of  a  street,  but  every  house,  every 
window,  every  clinging  vine,  every  projection,  was 
as  distinct  and  sharply  marked  as  if  the  time  were 
noonday;  and  yet  there  was  no  glare,  no  glitter, 
nothing  harsh  or  repulsive — the  noiseless  city  was 
flooded  with  the  mellowest  light  that  ever  streamed 
from  the  moon,  and  seemed  like  some  living  creature 
wrapped  in  peaceful  slumber.  On  its  further  side 
was  a  little  temple,  whose  delicate  pillars  and  ornate 
front  glowed  with  a  rich  luster  that  chained  the  eye 
like  a  spell;  and  nearer  by,  the  palace  of  the  king 
reared  its  creamy  walls  out  of  the  midst  of  a  great 
garden  of  shrubbery  that  was  flecked  all  over  with  a 
random  shower  of  amber  lights — a  spray  of  golden 
sparks  that  lost  their  brightness  in  the  glory  of  the 
moon,  and  glinted  softly  upon  the  sea  of  dark  foli- 
age like  the  pallid  stars  of  the  milky  way.  Over- 
head the  stately  columns,  majestic  still  in  their  ruin 
—  underfoot  the  dreaming  city  —  in  the  distance 
the  silver  sea — not  on  the  broad  earth  is  there 
another  picture  half  so  beautiful! 

As  we  turned  and  moved  again  through  the 
temple,  I  wished  that  the  illustrious  men  who  had 
sat  in  it  in  the  remote  ages  could  visit  it  again  and 
reveal  themselves  to  our  curious  eyes — Plato,  Aris- 
totle, Demosthenes,  Socrates,  Phocion,  Pythagoras, 
Euclid,  Pindar,  Xenophon,  Herodotus,  Praxiteles 
and  Phidias,  Zeuxis  the  painter.  What  a  constella- 
tion of  celebrated  names!     But  more  than  all,   I 

56 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

wished  that  old  Diogenes,  groping  so  patiently  with 
his  lantern,  searching  so  zealously  for  one  solitary 
honest  man  in  all  the  world,  might  meander  along 
and  stumble  on  our  party.  I  ought  not  to  say  it, 
maybe,  but  still  I  suppose  he  would  have  put  out 
his  light. 

We  left  the  Parthenon  to  keep  its  watch  over  old 
Athens,  as  it  had  kept  it  for  twenty- three  hundred 
years,  and  went  and  stood  outside  the  walls  of  the 
citadel.  In  the  distance  was  the  ancient,  but  still 
almost  perfect,  Temple  of  Theseus,  and  close  by, 
looking  to  the  West,  was  the  Bema,  from  whence 
Demosthenes  thundered  his  philippics  and  fired  the 
wavering  patriotism  of  his  countrymen.  To  the 
right  was  Mars  Hill,  where  the  Areopagus  sat  in 
ancient  times,  and  where  St.  Paul  defined  his  posi- 
tion, and  below  was  the  market-place  where  he  ' '  dis- 
puted daily"  with  the  gossip-loving  Athenians.  We 
climbed  the  stone  steps  St.  Paul  ascended,  and 
stood  in  the  square-cut  place  he  stood  in,  and  tried 
to  recollect  the  Bible  account  of  the  matter — but 
for  certain  reasons,  I  could  not  recall  the  words.  J 
have  found  them  since : 

Now  while  Paul  waited  for  them  at  Athens,  his  spirit  was 
stirred  in  him,  when  he  saw  the  city  wholly  given  up  to  idolatry. 

Therefore  disputed  he  in  the  synagogue  with  the  Jews,  and 
with  the  devout  persons,  and  in  the  market  daily  with  them  that 
met  with  him. 

And  they  took  him  and  brought  him  unto  Areopagus,  saying, 
May  we  know  what  this  new  doctrine  whereof  thou  speakest  is? 

Then  Paul  stood  in  the  midst  of  Mars  hill,  and  said,  Ye  men 
of  Athens,  I  perceive  that  in  all  things  ye  are  too  superstitious. 

57 


MARK    TWAIN 

For  as  I  passed  by  and  beheld  your  devotions,  I  found  an 
altar  with  this  inscription:  To  the  Unknown  God.  Whom, 
therefore,  ye  ignorantly  worship,  him  declare  I  unto  you. — 
Acts 7  ch.  xvii. 

It  occurred  to  us,  after  a  while,  that  if  we  wanted 
to  get  home  before  daylight  betrayed  us,  we  had 
better  be  moving.  So  we  hurried  away.  When 
far  on  our  road,  we  had  a  parting  view  of  the  Par- 
thenon, with  the  moonlight  streaming  through  its 
open  colonnades  and  touching  its  capitals  with 
silver.  As  it  looked  then,  solemn,  grand,  and  beau- 
tiful, it  will  always  remain  in  our  memories. 

As  we  marched  along,  we  began  to  get  over  our 
fears,  and  ceased  to  care  much  about  quarantine 
scouts  or  anybody  else.  We  grew  bold  and  reck- 
less ;  and  once,  in  a  sudden  burst  of  courage,  I  even 
threw  a  stone  at  a  dog.  It  was  a  pleasant  reflection, 
though,  that  I  did  not  hit  him,  because  his  master 
might  just  possibly  have  been  a  policeman.  Inspired 
by  this  happy  failure,  my  valor  became  utterly  un- 
controllable, and  at  intervals  I  absolutely  whistled, 
though  on  a  moderate  key.  But  boldness  breeds 
boldness,  and  shortly  I  plunged  into  a  vineyard,  in 
the  full  light  of  the  moon,  and  captured  a  gallon  of 
superb  grapes,  not  even  minding  the  presence  of  a 
peasant  who  rode  by  on  a  mule.  Denny  and  Birch 
followed  my  example.  Now  I  had  grapes  enough 
for  a  dozen,  but  then  Jackson  was  all  swollen  up 
with  courage,  too,  and  he  was  obliged  to  enter  a 
vineyard  presently.  The  first  bunch  he  seized 
brought  trouble.  A  frowsy,  bearded  brigand  sprang 
into  the  road  with  a  shout,  and  flourished  a  musket 

58 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

in  the  light  of  the  moon!  We  sidled  toward  the 
Piraeus — not  running,  you  understand,  but  only 
advancing  with  celerity.  The  brigand  shouted  again, 
but  still  we  advanced.  It  was  getting  late,  and  we 
had  no  time  to  fool  away  on  every  ass  that  wanted 
to  drivel  Greek  platitudes  to  us.  We  would  just  as 
soon  have  talked  with  him  as  not  if  we  had  not  been 
in  a  hurry.  Presently  Denny  said,  "  Those  fellows 
are  following  us!" 

We  turned,  and,  sure  enough,  there  they  were — 
three  fantastic  pirates  armed  with  guns.  We  slack- 
ened our  pace  to  let  them  come  up,  and  in  the 
mean  time  I  got  out  my  cargo  of  grapes  and  dropped 
them  firmly  but  reluctantly  into  the  shadows  by  the 
wayside.  But  I  was  not  afraid.  I  only  felt  that  it 
was  not  right  to  steal  grapes.  And  all  the  more  so 
when  the  owner  was  around — and  not  only  around, 
but  with  his  friends  around  also.  The  villains  came 
up  and  searched  a  bundle  Dr.  Birch  had  in  his  hand, 
and  scowled  upon  him  when  they  found  it  had 
nothing  in  it  but  some  holy  rocks  from  Mars  Hill, 
and  these  were  not  contraband.  They  evidently 
suspected  him  of  playing  some  wretched  fraud  upon 
them,  and  seemed  half  inclined  to  scalp  the  party. 
But  finally  they  dismissed  us  with  a  warning, 
couched  in  excellent  Greek,  I  suppose,  and  dropped 
tranquilly  in  our  wake.  When  they  had  gone  three 
hundred  yards  they  stopped,  and  we  went  on  rejoiced. 
But  behold,  another  armed  rascal  came  out  of 
the  shadows  and  took  their  place,  and  followed  us 
two  hundred  yards.  Then  he  delivered  us  over  to 
another  miscreant,  who  emerged  from  some  mys- 

59 


MARK    TWAIN 

terious  place,  and  he  in  turn  to  another!  For  a 
mile  and  a  half  our  rear  was  guarded  all  the  while 
by  armed  men.  I  never  traveled  in  so  much  state 
before  in  all  my  life. 

It  was  a  good  while  after  that  before  we  ventured 
to  steal  any  more  grapes,  and  when  we  did  we  stirred 
up  another  troublesome  brigand,  and  then  we  ceased 
all  further  speculation  in  that  line.  I  suppose  that- 
fellow  that  rode  by  on  the  mule  posted  all  the 
sentinels,  from  Athens  to  the  Piraeus,  about  us. 

Every  field  on  that  long  route  was  watched  by  an 
armed  sentinel,  some  of  whom  had  fallen  asleep,  no 
doubt,  but  were  on  hand,  nevertheless.  This  shows 
what  sort  of  a  country  modern  Attica  is — a  com- 
munity of  questionable  characters.  These  men  were 
not  there  to  guard  their  possessions  against  strangers, 
but  against  each  other;  for  strangers  seldom  visit 
Athens  and  the  Piraeus,  and  when  they  do,  they  go 
in  daylight,  and  can  buy  all  the  grapes  they  want 
for  a  trifle.  The  modern  inhabitants  are  confiscators 
and  falsifiers  of  high  repute,  if  gossip  speaks  truly 
concerning  them,  and  I  freely  believe  it  does. 

Just  as  the  earliest  tinges  of  the  dawn  flushed  the 
eastern  sky  and  turned  the  pillared  Parthenon  to  a 
broken  harp  hung  in  the  pearly  horizon,  we  closed 
our  thirteenth  mile  of  weary,  roundabout  marching, 
and  emerged  upon  the  seashore  abreast  the  ships, 
with  our  usual  escort  of  fifteen  hundred  Piraean  dogs 
howling  at  our  heels.  We  hailed  a  boat  that  was 
two  or  three  hundred  yards  from  shore,  and  discov- 
ered in  a  moment  that  it  was  a  police-boat  on  the 
lookout   for   any   quarantine-breakers    that    might 

60 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

chance  to  be  abroad.  So  we  dodged — we  were 
used  to  that  by  this  time — and  when  the  scouts 
reached  the  spot  we  had  so  lately  occupied,  we  were 
absent.  They  cruised  along  the  shore,  but  in  the 
wrong  direction,  and  shortly  our  own  boat  issued 
from  the  gloom  and  took  us  aboard.  They  had 
heard  our  signal  on  the  ship.  We  rowed  noiselessly 
away,  and  before  the  police-boat  came  in  sight 
again,  we  were  safe  at  home  once  more. 

Four  more  of  our  passengers  were  anxious  to  visit 
Athens,  and  started  half  an  hour  after  we  returned* 
but  they  had  not  been  ashore  five  minutes  till  the 
police  discovered  and  chased  them  so  hotly  that  they 
barely  escaped  to  their  boat  again,  and  that  was  all. 
They  pursued  the  enterprise  no  further. 

We  set  sail  for  Constantinople  to-day,  but  some  of  us 
little  care  for  that.  We  have  seen  all  there  was  to  see 
in  the  old  city  that  had  its  birth  sixteen  hundred  years 
before  Christ  was  born,  and  was  an  old  town  before  the 
foundations  of  Troy  were  laid — and  saw  it  in  its  most 
attractive  aspect.     Wherefore,  why  should  we  worry  ? 

Two  other  passengers  ran  the  blockade  success- 
fully last  night.  So  we  learned  this  morning.  They 
slipped  away  so  quietly  that  they  were  not  missed 
from  the  ship  for  several  hours.  They  had  the 
hardihood  to  march  into  the  Piraeus  in  the  early 
dusk  and  hire  a  carriage.  They  ran  some  danger  of 
adding  two  or  three  months'  imprisonment  to  the 
other  novelties  of  their  Holy  Land  Pleasure  Excur- 
sion. I  admire  "cheek."1  But  they  went  and  came 
safely,  and  never  walked  a  step. 

1  Quotation  from  the  Pilgrims. 
61 


CHAPTER  VI 

FROM  Athens  all  through  the  islands  of  the 
Grecian  Archipelago,  we  saw  little  but  forbid- 
ding sea-walls  and  barren  hills,  sometimes  sur- 
mounted by  three  or  four  graceful  columns  of  some 
ancient  temple,  lonely  and  deserted — a  fitting  sym- 
bol of  the  desolation  that  has  come  upon  all  Greece 
in  these  latter  ages.  We  saw  no  plowed  fields,  very 
few  villages,  no  trees  or  grass  or  vegetation  of  any 
kind,  scarcely,  and  hardly  ever  an  isolated  house. 
Greece  is  a  bleak,  unsmiling  desert,  without  agricul- 
ture, manufactures,  or  commerce,  apparently.  What 
supports  its  poverty-stricken  people  or  its  govern- 
ment, is  a  mystery. 

I  suppose  that  ancient  Greece  and  modern  Greece 
compared,  furnish  the  most  extravagant  contrast  to 
be  found  in  history.  George  I.,  an  infant  of  eigh- 
teen, and  a  scraggy  nest  of  foreign  office-holders, 
sit  in  the  places  of  Themistocles,  Pericles,  and  the 
illustrious  scholars  and  generals  of  the  Golden  Age 
of  Greece.  The  fleets  that  were  the  wonder  of  the 
world  when  the  Parthenon  was  new,  are  a  beggarly 
handful  of  fishing-smacks  now,  and  the  manly  peo- 
ple that  performed  such  miracles  of  valor  at  Mara- 
thon are  only  a  tribe  of  unconsidered  slaves  to-day. 
The  classic  Ilissus  has  gone  dry,  and  so  have  all 

62 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  sources  of  Grecian  wealth  and  greatness.  The 
nation  numbers  only  eight  hundred  thousand  souls, 
and  there  is  poverty  and  misery  and  mendacity 
enough  among  them  to  furnish  forty  millions  and  be 
liberal  about  it.  Under  King  Otho  the  revenues  of 
the  state  were  five  millions  of  dollars — raised  from 
a  tax  of  one-tenth  of  all  the  agricultural  products  of 
the  land  (which  tenth  the  farmer  had  to  bring  to  the 
royal  granaries  on  pack-mules  any  distance  not 
exceeding  six  leagues)  and  from  extravagant  taxes 
on  trade  and  commerce.  Out  of  that  five  millions 
the  small  tyrant  tried  to  keep  an  army  of  ten  thou- 
sand men,  pay  all  the  hundreds  of  useless  Grand 
Equerries  in  Waiting,  First  Grooms  of  the  Bed- 
chamber, Loiid  High  Chancellors  of  the  Exploded 
Exchequer,  and  all  the  other  absurdities  which  these 
puppy-kingdoms  indulge  in,  in  imitation  of  the  great 
monarchies ;  and  in  addition  he  set  about  building  a 
white  marble  palace  to  cost  about  five  millions  itself. 
The  result  was,  simply :  Ten  into  five  goes  no  times 
and  none  over.  All  these  things  could  not  be  done 
with  five  millions,  and  Otho  fell  into  trouble. 

The  Greek  throne,  with  its  unpromising  adjuncts 
of  a  ragged  population  of  ingenious  rascals  who 
were  out  of  employment  eight  months  in  the  year 
because  there  was  little  for  them  to  borrow  and  less 
to  confiscate,  and  a  waste  of  barren  hills  and  weed- 
grown  deserts,  went  begging  for  a  good  while.  It 
was  offered  to  one  of  Victoria's  sons,  and  afterward 
to  various  other  younger  sons  of  royalty  who  had  no 
thrones  and  were  out  of  business,  but  they  all  had 
the  charity  to  decline  the  dreary  honor,  and  venera- 

63 


MARK    TWAIN 

tion  enough  for  Greece's  ancient  greatness  to  refuse 
to  mock  her  sorrowful  rags  and  dirt  with  a  tinsel 
throne  in  this  day  of  her  humiliation — till  they 
came  to  this  young  Danish  George,  and  he  took  it. 
He  has  finished  the  splendid  palace  I  saw  in  the  radi- 
ant moonlight  the  other  night,  and  is  doing  many 
other  things  for  the  salvation  of  Greece,  they  say. 
We  sailed  through  the  barren  Archipelago,  and 
into  the  narrow  channel  they  sometimes  call  the 
Dardanelles  and  sometimes  the  Hellespont.  This 
part  of  the  country  is  rich  in  historic  reminiscences, 
and  poor  as  Sahara  in  everything  else.  For  in- 
stance, as  we  approached  the  Dardanelles,  we 
coasted  along  the  Plains  of  Troy  and  past  the  mouth 
of  the  Scamander;  we  saw  where  Troy  had  stood 
(in  the  distance),  and  where  it  does  not  stand  now 
— a  city  that  perished  when  the  worM  was  young. 
The  poor  Trojans  are  all  dead  now.  They  were 
born  too  late  to  see  Noah's  ark,  and  died  too  soon 
to  see  our  menagerie:  We  saw  where  Agamemnon's 
fleets  rendezvoused,  and  away  inland  a  mountain 
which  the  map  said  was  Mount  Ida.  Within  the 
Hellespont  we  saw  where  the  original  first  shoddy 
contract  mentioned  in  history  was  carried  out,  and 
the  "parties  of  the  second  part"  gently  rebuked 
by  Xerxes.  I  speak  of  the  famous  bridge  of  boats 
which  Xerxes  ordered  to  be  built  over  the  narrowest 
part  of  the  Hellespont  (where  it  is  only  two  or  three 
miles  wide).  A  moderate  gale  destroyed  the  flimsy 
structure,  and  the  King,  thinking  that  to  publicly 
rebuke  the  contractors  might  have  a  good  effect  on 
the  next  set,  called  them  out  before  the  army  and 

64 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

had  them  beheaded.  In  the  next  ten  minutes  he  let 
a  new  contract  for  the  bridge.  It  has  been  observed 
by  ancient  writers  that  the  second  bridge  was  a  very 
good  bridge.  Xerxes  crossed  his  host  of  five  millions 
of  men  on  it,  and  if  it  had  not  been  purposely 
destroyed,  it  would  probably  have  been  there  yet. 
If  our  government  would  rebuke  some  of  our  shoddy 
contractors  occasionally,  it  might  work  much  good. 
In  the  Hellespont  we  saw  where  Leander  and  Lord 
Byron  swam  across,  the  one  to  see  her  upon  whom 
his  soul's  affections  were  fixed  with  a  devotion  that 
only  death  could  impair,  and  the  other  merely  for 
a  flyer,  as  Jack  says.  We  had  two  noted  tombs 
near  us,  too.  On  one  shore  slept  Ajax,  and  on  the 
other  Hecuba. 

We  had  water  batteries  and  forts  on  both  sides  of 
the  Hellespont,  flying  the  crimson  flag  of  Turkey, 
with  its  white  crescent,  and  occasionally  a  village, 
and  sometimes  a  train  of  camels;  we  had  all  these 
to  look  at  till  we  entered  the  broad  sea  of  Marmora, 
and  then  the  land  soon  fading  from  view,  we  resumed 
euchre  and  whist  once  more. 

We  dropped  anchor  in  the  mouth  of  the  Golden 
Horn  at  daylight  in  the  morning.  Only  three  or 
four  of  us  were  up  to  see  the  great  Ottoman  capital. 
The  passengers  do  not  turn  out  at  unseasonable 
hours,  as  they  used  to,  to  get  the  earliest  possible 
glimpse  of  strange  foreign  cities.  They  are  well 
over  that.  If  we  were  lying  in  sight  of  the  Pyra- 
mids of  Egypt,  they  would  not  come  on  deck  until 
after  breakfast,  nowadays. 

The  Golden  Horn  is  a  narrow  arm  of  the  sea, 

6? 


MARK    TWAIN 

which  branches  from  the  Bosporus  (a  sort  of  broad 
river  which  connects  the  Marmora  and  Black  Seas), 
and,  curving  around,  divides  the  city  in  the  middle. 
Galata  and  Pera  are  on  one  side  of  the  Bosporus, 
and  the  Golden  Horn;  Stamboul  (ancient  Byzan- 
tium) is  upon  the  other.  On  the  other  bank  of  the 
Bosporus  is  Scutari  and  other  suburbs  of  Constanti- 
nople. This  great  city  contains  a  million  inhabitants, 
but  so  narrow  are  its  streets,  and  so  crowded  to- 
gether are  its  houses,  that  it  does  not  cover  much 
more  than  half  as  much  ground  as  New  York  City. 
Seen  from  the  anchorage  or  from  a  mile  or  so  up 
the  Bosporus,  it  is  by  far  the  handsomest  city  we 
have  seen.  Its  dense  array  of  houses  swells  upward 
from  the  water's  edge,  and  spreads  over  the  domes 
of  many  hills;  and  the  gardens  that  peep  out  here 
and  there,  the  great  globes  of  the  mosques,  and  the 
countless  minarets  that  meet  the  eye  everywhere, 
invest  the  metropolis  with  the  quaint  Oriental  aspect 
one  dreams  of  when  he  reads  books  of  Eastern 
travel.     Constantinople  makes  a  noble  picture. 

But  its  attractiveness  begins  and  ends  with  its 
picturesqueness.  From  the  time  one  starts  ashore 
till  he  gets  back  again,  he  execrates  it.  The  boat 
he  goes  in  is  admirably  miscalculated  for  the  service 
it  is  built  for.  It  is  handsomely  and  neatly  fitted 
up,  but  no  man  could  handle  it  well  in  the  turbulent 
currents  that  sweep  down  the  Bosporus  from  the 
Black  Sea,  and  few  men  could  row  it  satisfactorily 
even  in  still  water.  It  is  a  long,  light  canoe  (caique), 
large  at  one  end  and  tapering  to  a  knife-blade  at  the 
other.     They  make  that  long  sharp  end  the  bow, 

66 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  you  can  imagine  how  these  boiling  currents  spin 
it  about.  It  has  two  oars,  and  sometimes  four,  and 
no  rudder.  You  start  to  go  to  a  given  point  and 
you  run  in  fifty  different  directions  before  you  get 
there.  First  one  oar  is  backing  water,  and  then  the 
other;  it  is  seldom  that  both  are  going  ahead  at 
once.  This  kind  of  boating  is  calculated  to  drive  an 
impatient  man  mad  in  a  week.  The  boatmen  are 
the  awkwardest,  the  stupidest,  and  the  most  unscien- 
tific on  earth,  without  question. 

Ashore,  it  was — well,  it  was  an  eternal  circus. 
People  were  thicker  than  bees,  in  those  narrow 
streets,  and  the  men  were  dressed  in  all  the  outra- 
geous, outlandish,  idolatrous,  extravagant,  thunder- 
and-lightning  costumes  that  ever  a  tailor  with  the 
delirium  tremens  and  seven  devils  could  conceive  of. 
There  was  no  freak  in  dress  too  crazy  to  be  indulged 
in;  no  absurdity  too  absurd  to  be  tolerated;  no 
frenzy  in  ragged  diabolism  too  fantastic  to  be 
attempted.  No  two  men  were  dressed  alike.  It 
was  a  wild  masquerade  of  all  imaginable  costumes — 
every  struggling  throng  in  every  street  was  a  dis- 
solving view  of  stunning  contrasts.  Some  patriarchs 
wore  awful  turbans,  but  the  grand  mass  of  the  infidel 
horde  wore  the  fiery  red  skull-cap  they  call  a  fez. 
All  the  remainder  of  the  raiment  they  indulged  in 
was  utterly  indescribable. 

The  shops  here  are  mere  coops,  mere  boxes,  bath- 
rooms, closets — anything  you  please  to  call  them — 
on  the  first  floor.  The  Turks  sit  cross-legged  in 
them,  and  work  and  trade  and  smoke  long  pipes, 
and  smell  like — like  Turks.     That  covers  the  ground. 

67 


MARK    TWAIN 

Crowding  the  narrow  streets  in  front  of  them  are 
beggars,  who  beg  forever,  yet  never  collect  anything; 
and  wonderful  cripples,  distorted  out  of  all  semblance 
of  humanity,  almost ;  vagabonds  driving  laden  asses ; 
porters  carrying  dry-goods  boxes  as  large  as  cot- 
tages on  their  backs;  peddlers  of  grapes,  hot  corn, 
pumpkin  seeds,  and  a  hundred  other  things,  yelling 
like  fiends;  and  sleeping  happily,  comfortably, 
serenely,  among  the  hurrying  feet,  are  the  famed 
dogs  of  Constantinople;  drifting  noiselessly  about 
are  squads  of  Turkish  women,  draped  from  chin  to 
feet  in  flowing  robes,  and  with  snowy  veils  bound 
about  their  heads,  that  disclose  only  the  eyes  and  a 
vague,  shadowy  notion  of  their  features.  Seen 
moving  about,  far  away  in  the  dim,  arched  aisles  of 
the  Great  Bazar,  they  look  as  the  shrouded  dead 
must  have  looked  when  they  walked  forth  from  their 
graves  amid  the  storms  and  thunders  and  earth- 
quakes that  burst  upon  Calvary  that  awful  night 
of  the  Crucifixion.  A  street  in  Constantinople  is  a 
picture  which  one  ought  to  see  once — not  oftener. 

And  then  there  was  the  goose-rancher — a  fellow 
who  drove  a  hundred  geese  before  him  about  the 
city,  and  tried  to  sell  them.  He  had  a  pole  ten  feet 
long,  with  a  crook  in  the  end  of  it,  and  occasionally 
a  goose  would  branch  out  from  the  flock  and  make 
a  lively  break  around  the  corner,  with  wings  half 
lifted  and  neck  stretched  to  its  utmost.  Did  the 
goose-merchant  get  excited?  No.  He  took  his  pole 
and  reached  after  that  goose  with  unspeakable  sang 
froid — took  a  hitch  round  his  neck,  and  "yanked" 
him  back  to  his  place  in   the   flock   without   an 

^8 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

effort.  He  steered  his  geese  with  that  stick  as 
easily  as  another  man  would  steer  a  yawl.  A  few 
hours  afterward  we  saw  him  sitting  on  a  stone  at 
a  corner,  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil,  sound  asleep 
in  the  sun,  with  his  geese  squatting  around  him,  or 
dodging  out  of  the  way  of  asses  and  men.  We 
came  by  again,  within  the  hour,  and  he  was  taking 
account  of  stock,  to  see  whether  any  of  his  flock 
had  strayed  or  been  stolen.  The  way  he  did  it  was 
unique.  He  put  the  end  of  his  stick  within  six  or 
eight  inches  of  a  stone  wall,  and  made  the  geese 
march  in  single  file  between  it  and  the  wall.  He 
counted  them  as  they  went  by.  There  was  no 
dodging  that  arrangement. 

If  you  want  dwarfs — I  mean  just  a  few  dwarfs 
for  a  curiosity — go  to  Genoa.  If  you  wish  to  buy 
them  by  the  gross,  for  retail,  go  to  Milan.  There 
are  plenty  of  dwarfs  all  over  Italy,  but  it  did  seem 
to  me  that  in  Milan  the  crop  was  luxuriant.  If  you 
would  see  a  fair  average  style  of  assorted  cripples, 
go  to  Naples,  or  travel  through  the  Roman  states. 
But  if  you  would  see  the  very  heart  and  home  of 
cripples  and  human  monsters,  both,  go  straight  to 
Constantinople.  A  beggar  in  Naples  who  can  show 
a  foot  which  has  all  run  into  one  horrible  toe,  with 
one  shapeless  nail  on  it,  has  a  fortune — but  such  an 
exhibition  as  that  would  not  provoke  any  notice 
in  Constantinople.  The  man  would  starve.  Who 
would  pay  any  attention  to  attractions  like  his  among 
the  rare  monsters  that  throng  the  bridges  of  the 
Golden  Horn  and  display  their  deformities  in  the 
gutters  of  Stamboul  ?    Oh,  wretched  impostor !    How 

69 


MARK    TWAIN 

could  he  stand  against  the  three-legged  woman, 
and  the  man  with  his  eye  in  his  cheek?  How  would 
he  blush  in  presence  of  the  man  with  fingers  on  his 
elbow?  Where  would  he  hide  himself  when  the 
dwarf  with  seven  ringers  on  each  hand,  no  upper 
lip,  and  his  under- jaw  gone,  came  down  in  his 
majesty?  Bismillah!  The  cripples  of  Europe  are 
a  delusion  and  a  fraud.  The  truly  gifted  nourish 
only  in  the  byways  of  Pera  and  Stamboul. 

That  three-legged  woman  lay  on  the  bridge,  with 
her  stock  in  trade  so  disposed  as  to  command  the 
most  striking  effect — one  natural  leg,  and  two  long, 
slender,  twisted  ones  with  feet  on  them  like  some- 
body else's  forearm.  Then  there  was  a  man  further 
along  who  had  no  eyes,  and  whose  face  was  the 
color  of  a  fly-blown  beefsteak,  and  wrinkled  and 
twisted  like  a  lava-flow — and  verily  so  tumbled  and 
distorted  were  his  features  that  no  man  could  tell  the 
wart  that  served  him  for  a  nose  from  his  cheek- 
bones. In  Stamboul  was  a  man  with  a  prodigious 
head,  an  uncommonly  long  body,  legs  eight  inches 
long,  and  feet  like  snow-shoes.  He  traveled  on 
those  feet  and  his  hands,  and  was  as  sway-backed  as 
if  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes  had  been  riding  him. 
Ah,  a  beggar  has  to  have  exceedingly  good  points 
to  make  a  living  in  Constantinople.  A  blue-faced 
man,  who  had  nothing  to  offer  except  that  he  had 
been  blown  up  in  a  mine,  would  be  regarded  as  a 
rank  impostor,  and  a  mere  damaged  soldier  on 
crutches  would  never  make  a  cent.  It  would  pay 
him  to  get  a  piece  of  his  head  taken  off,  and  culti- 
vate a  wen  like  a  carpet-sack. 

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THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

The  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia  is  the  chief  lion  of 
Constantinople.  You  must  get  a  firman  and  hurry 
there  the  first  thing.  We  did  that.  We  did  not  get 
a  firman,  but  we  took  along  four  or  five  francs 
apiece,  which  is  much  the  same  thing. 

I  do  not  think  much  of  the  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia. 
I  suppose  I  lack  appreciation.  We  will  let  it  go  at 
that.  It  is  the  rustiest  old  barn  in  heathendom.  I 
believe  all  the  interest  that  attaches  to  it  comes  from 
the  fact  that  it  was  built  for  a  Christian  church  and 
then  turned  into  a  mosque,  without  much  alteration, 
by  the  Mohammedan  conquerors  of  the  land.  They 
made  me  take  off  my  boots  and  walk  into  the  place 
in  my  stocking  feet.  I  caught  cold,  and  got  myself 
so  stuck  up  with  a  complication  of  gums,  slime,  and 
general  corruption,  that  I  wore  out  more  than  two 
thousand  pair  of  boot- jacks  getting  my  boots  off 
that  night,  and  even  then  some  Christian  hide  peeled 
off  with  them.     I  abate  not  a  single  boot-jack. 

St.  Sophia  is  a  colossal  church,  thirteen  or  four- 
teen hundred  years  old,  and  unsightly  enough  to 
be  very,  very  much  older.  Its  immense  dome  is 
said  to  be  more  wonderful  than  St.  Peters,  but  its 
dirt  is  much  more  wonderful  than  its  dome,  though 
they  never  mention  it.  The  church  has  a  hundred 
and  seventy  pillars  in  it,  each  a  single  piece,  and  all 
of  costly  marbles  of  various  kinds,  but  they  came 
from  ancient  temples  at  Baalbec,  Heliopolis,  Athens, 
and  Ephesus,  and  are  battered,  ugly,  and  repulsive. 
They  were  a  thousand  years  old  when  this  church 
was  new,  and  then  the  contrast  must  have  been 
ghastly — if  Justinian's  architects  did  not  trim  them 

71 


MARK    TWAIN 

any.  The  inside  of  the  dome  is  figured  all  over  with 
a  monstrous  inscription  in  Turkish  characters, 
wrought  in  gold  mosaic,  that  looks  as  glaring  as  a 
circus  bill;  the  pavements  and  the  marble  balus- 
trades are  all  battered  and  dirty;  the  perspective  is 
marred  everywhere  by  a  web  of  ropes  that  depend 
from  the  dizzy  height  of  the  dome,  and  suspend 
countless  dingy,  coarse  oil-lamps,  and  ostrich  eggs, 
six  or  seven  feet  above  the  floor.  Squatting  and 
sitting  in  groups,  here  and  there  and  far  and  near, 
were  ragged  Turks  reading  books,  hearing  sermons, 
or  receiving  lessons  like  children,  and  in  fifty  places 
were  more  of  the  same  sort  bowing  and  straightening 
up,  bowing  again  and  getting  down  to  kiss  the  earth, 
muttering  prayers  the  while,  and  keeping  up  their 
gymnastics  till  they  ought  to  have  been  tired,  if  they 
were  not. 

Everywhere  was  dirt  and  dust  and  dinginess  and 
gloom;  everywhere  were  signs  of  a  hoary  antiquity, 
but  with  nothing  touching  or  beautiful  about  it; 
everywhere  were  those  groups  of  fantastic  pagans; 
overhead  the  gaudy  mosaics  and  the  web  of  lamp- 
ropes — nowhere  was  there  anything  to  win  one's 
love  or  challenge  his  admiration. 

The  people  who  go  into  ecstasies  over  St.  Sophia 
must  surely  get  them  out  of  the  guide-book  (where 
every  church  is  spoken  of  as  being  "considered  by 
good  judges  to  be  the  most  marvelous  structure,  in 
many  respects,  that  the  world  has  ever  seen"). 
Or  else  they  are  those  old  connoisseurs  from  the 
wilds  of  New  Jersey  who  laboriously  learn  the 
difference  between  a  fresco  and  a  fire-plug,   and 

72 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

from  that  day  forward  feel  privileged  to  void  their 
critical  bathos  on  painting,  sculpture,  and  archi- 
tecture forevermore. 

We  visited  the  Dancing  Dervishes.  There  were 
twenty-one  of  them.  They  wore  a  long,  light- 
colored  loose  robe  that  hung  to  their  heels.  Each 
in  his  turn  went  up  to  the  priest  (they  were  all 
within  a  large  circular  railing)  and  bowed  profoundly 
and  then  went  spinning  away  deliriously  and  took 
his  appointed  place  in  the  circle,  and  continued  to 
spin.  When  all  had  spun  themselves  to  their  places, 
they  were  about  five  or  six  feet  apart — and  so  situ- 
ated, the  entire  circle  of  spinning  pagans  spun 
itself  three  separate  times  around  the  room.  It  took 
twenty-five  minutes  to  do  it.  They  spun  on  the 
left  foot,  and  kept  themselves  going  by  passing  the 
right  rapidly  before  it  and  digging  it  against  the 
waxed  floor.  Some  of  them  made  incredible  "time." 
Most  of  them  spun  around  forty  times  in  a  minute, 
and  one  artist  averaged  about  sixty-one  times  a 
minute,  and  kept  it  up  during  the  whole  twenty-five. 
His  robe  filled  with  air  and  stood  out  all  around 
him  like  a  balloon. 

They  made  no  noise  of  any  kind,  and  most  of 
them  tilted  their  heads  back  and  closed  their  eyes, 
entranced  with  a  sort  of  devotional  ecstasy.  There 
was  a  rude  kind  of  music,  part  of  the  time,  but  the 
musicians  were  not  visible.  None  but  spinners  were 
allowed  within  the  circle.  A  man  had  to  either  spin 
or  stay  outside.  It  was  about  as  barbarous  an 
exhibition  as  we  have  witnessed  yet.  Then  sick  per- 
sons came  and  lay  down,  and  beside  them  women 

73 


MARK    TWAIN 

laid  their  sick  children  (one  a  babe  at  the  breast), 
and  the  patriarch  of  the  Dervishes  walked  upon 
their  bodies.  He  was  supposed  to  cure  their  dis- 
eases by  trampling  upon  their  breasts  or  backs  or 
standing  on  the  back  of  their  necks.  This  is  well 
enough  for  a  people  who  think  all  their  affairs 
are  made  or  marred  by  viewless  spirits  of  the  air — 
by  giants,  gnomes,  and  genii  —  and  who  still  be- 
lieve, to  this  day,  all  the  wild  tales  in  the  Arabian 
Nights.  Even  so  an  intelligent  missionary  tetts 
me. 

We  visited  the  Thousand  and  One  Columns.  I 
do  not  know  what  it  was  originally  intended  for,  but 
they  said  it  was  built  for  a  reservoir.  It  is  situated 
in  the  center  of  Constantinople.  You  go  down  a 
flight  of  stone  steps  in  the  middle  of  a  barren  place, 
and  there  you  are.  You  are  forty  feet  underground, 
and  in  the  midst  of  a  perfect  wilderness  of  tall, 
slender,  granite  columns,  of  Byzantine  architecture. 
Stand  where  you  would,  or  change  your  position  as 
often  as  you  pleased,  you  were  always  a  center  from 
which  radiated  a  dozen  long  archways  and  colon- 
nades that  lost  themselves  in  distance  and  the  som- 
ber twilight  of  the  place.  This  old  dried-up  reser- 
voir is  occupied  by  a  few  ghostly  silk-spinners  now, 
and  one  of  them  showed  me  a  cross  cut  high  up 
in  one  of  the  pillars.  I  suppose  he  meant  me  to 
understand  that  the  institution  was  there  before 
the  Turkish  occupation,  and  I  thought  he  made  a 
remark  to  that  effect;  but  he  must  have  had  an 
impediment  in  his  speech,  for  I  did  not  understand 
him. 

74 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

We  took  off  our  shoes  and  went  into  the  marble 
mausoleum  of  the  Sultan  Mahmoud,  the  neatest 
piece  of  architecture,  inside,  that  I  have  seen  lately. 
Mahmoud' s  tomb  was  covered  with  a  black  velvet 
pall,  which  was  elaborately  embroidered  with  silver; 
it  stood  within  a  fancy  silver  railing;  at  the  side 
and  corners  were  silver  candlesticks  that  would 
weigh  more  than  a  hundred  pounds,  and  they  sup- 
ported candles  as  large  as  a  man's  leg;  on  the  top 
'of  the  sarcophagus  was  a  fez,  with  a  handsome 
diamond  ornament  upon  it,  which  an  attendant  said 
cost  a  hundred  thousand  pounds,  and  lied  like  a 
Turk  when  he  said  it.  Mahmoud's  whole  family 
were  comfortably  planted  around  him. 

We  went  to  the  Great  Bazar  in  Stamboul,  of 
course,  and  I  shall  not  describe  it  further  than  to 
say  it  is  a  monstrous  hive  of  little  shops — thou- 
sands, I  should  say — all  under  one  roof,  and  cut 
up  into  innumerable  little  blocks  by  narrow  streets 
which  are  arched  overhead.  One  street  is  devoted 
to  a  particular  kind  of  merchandise,  another  to 
another,  and  so  on.  When  you  wish  to  buy  a  pair 
of  shoes  you  have  the  swing  of  the  whole  street — 
you  do  not  have  to  walk  yourself  down  hunting 
stores  in  different  localities.  It  is  the  same  with 
silks,  antiquities,  shawls,  etc.  The  place  is  crowded 
with  people  all  the  time,  and  as  the  gay-colored 
Eastern  fabrics  are  lavishly  displayed  before  every 
shop,  the  Great  Bazar  of  Stamboul  is  one  of  the 
sights  that  are  worth  seeing.  It  is  full  of  life,  and 
stir,  and  business,  dirt,  beggars,  asses,  yelling  ped- 
dlers, porters,  dervishes,  high-born  Turkish  female 

75 


MARK    TWAIN 

shoppers,  Greeks,  and  weird-looking  and  weirdly 
dressed  Mohammedans  from  the  mountains  and  the 
far  provinces — and  the  only  solitary  thing  one  does 
not  smell  when  he  is  in  the  Great  Bazar,  is  some- 
thing which  smells  good. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MOSQUES  are  plenty,  churches  are  plenty,  grave- 
.  yards  are  plenty,  but  morals  and  whisky  are 
scarce.  The  Koran  does  not  permit  Mohammedans 
to  drink.  Their  natural  instincts  do  not  permit 
them  to  be  moral.  They  say  the  Sultan  has  eight 
hundred  wives.  This  almost  amounts  to  bigamy. 
It  makes  our  cheeks  burn  with  shame  to  see  such  a 
thing  permitted  here  in  Turkey.  We  do  not  mind 
it  so  much  in  Salt  Lake,  however. 

Circassian  and  Georgian  girls  are  still  sold  in  Con- 
stantinople by  their  parents,  but  not  publicly.  The 
great  slave-marts  we  have  all  read  so  much  about — 
where  tender  young  girls  were  stripped  for  inspec- 
tion, and  criticized  and  discussed  just  as  if  they  were 
horses  at  an  agricultural  fair — no  longer  exist.  The 
exhibition  and  the  sales  are  private  now.  Stocks 
are  up,  just  at  present,  partly  because  of  a  brisk 
demand  created  by  the  recent  return  of  the  Sultan's 
suite  from  the  courts  of  Europe;  partly  on  account 
of  an  unusual  abundance  of  breadstufTs,  which 
leaves  holders  untortured  by  hunger  and  enables 
them  to  hold  back  for  high  prices;  and  partly  be- 
cause buyers  are  too  weak  to  bear  the  market,  while 
sellers  are  amply  prepared  to  bull  it.  Under  these 
circumstances,  if  the  American  metropolitan  news- 

77 


MARK    TWAIN 

papers  were  published  here  in  Constantinople,  their 
next  commercial  report  would  read  about  as  follows, 
I  suppose: 

SLAVE-GIRL    MARKET   REPORT 

Best  brands  Circassians,  crop  of  1850,  £200;  1852,  £250; 
1854,  £300.  Best  brands  Georgian,  none  in  market;  second 
quality,  185 1,  £180.  Nineteen  fair  to  middling  Wallachian 
girls  offered  at  £130  @  150,  but  no  takers;  sixteen  prime  Ai 
sold  in  small  lots  to  close  out — terms  private. 

Sales  of  one  lot  Circassians,  prime  to  good,  1852  to  1854, 
at  £240  @  242^,  buyer  30;  one  forty-niner — damaged — at 
£23,  seller  ten,  no  deposit.  Several  Georgians,  fancy  brands, 
1852,  changed  hands  to  fill  orders.  The  Georgians  now  on  hand 
are  mostly  last  year's  crop,  which  was  unusually  poor.  The 
new  crop  is  a  little  backward,  but  will  be  coming  in  shortly. 
As  regards  its  quantity  and  quality,  the  accounts  are  most  en- 
couraging. In  this  connection  we  can  safely  say,  also,  that 
the  new  crop  of  Circassians  is  looking  extremely  well.  His 
Majesty  the  Sultan  has  already  sent  in  large  orders  for  his  new 
harem,  which  will  be  finished  within  a  fortnight,  and  this  has 
naturally  strengthened  the  market  and  given  Circassian  stock 
a  strong  upward  tendency.  Taking  advantage  of  the  inflated 
market,  many  of  our  shrewdest  operators  are  selling  short. 
There  are  hints  of  a  "corner"  on  Wallachians. 

There  is  nothing  new  in  Nubians.     Slow  sale. 

Eunuchs — none  offering;  however,  large  cargoes  are  expected 
from  Egypt  to-day. 

I  think  the  above  would  be  about  the  style  of  the 
commercial  report.  Prices  are  pretty  high  now,  and 
holders  firm;  but,  two  or  three  years  ago,  parents 
in  a  starving  condition  brought  their  young  daugh- 
ters down  here  and  sold  them  for  even  twenty  and 
thirty  dollars,  when  they  could  do  no  better,  simply 
to  save  themselves  and  the  girls  from  dying  of  want. 
It  is  sad  to  think  of  so  distressing  a  thing  as  this, 
and  I  for  one  am  sincerely  glad  the  prices  are  up  again 

78 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Commercial  morals,  especially,  are  bad.  There 
is  no  gainsaying  that.  Greek,  Turkish,  and  Arme- 
nian morals  consist  only  in  attending  church  regu- 
larly on  the  appointed  Sabbaths,  and  in  breaking 
the  ten  commandments  all  the  balance  of  the  week. 
It  comes  natural  to  them  to  lie  and  cheat  in  the  first 
place,  and  then  they  go  on  and  improve  on  nature 
until  they  arrive  at  perfection.  In  recommending 
his  son  to  a  merchant  as  a  valuable  salesman,  a 
father  does  not  say  he  is  a  nice,  moral,  upright  boy, 
and  goes  to  Sunday-school  and  is  honest,  but  he 
says,  "This  boy  is  worth  his  weight  in  broad  pieces 
of  a  hundred — for  behold,  he  will  cheat  whomsoever 
hath  dealings  with  him,  and  from  the  Euxine  to  the 
waters  of  Marmora  there  abideth  not  so  gifted  a 
liar!"  How  is  that  for  a  recommendation?  The 
missionaries  tell  me  that  they  hear  encomiums  like 
that  passed  upon  people  every  day.  They  say  of  a 
person  they  admire,  "Ah,  he  is  a  charming  swindler, 
and  a  most  exquisite  liar!" 

Everybody  lies  and  cheats — everybody  who  is  in 
business,  at  any  rate.  Even  foreigners  soon  have 
to  come  down  to  the  custom  of  the  country,  and 
they  do  not  buy  and  sell  long  in  Constantinople  till 
they  lie  and  cheat  like  a  Greek.  I  say  like  a  Greek, 
because  the  Greeks  are  called  the  worst  transgressors 
in  this  line.  Several  Americans,  long  resident  in 
Constantinople,  contend  that  most  Turks  are  pretty 
trustworthy,  but  few  claim  that  the  Greeks  have  any 
virtues  that  a  man  can  discover — at  least  without 
a  fire  assay. 

I  am  half  willing  to  believe  that  the  celebrated 

79 


MARK    TWAIN 

dogs  of  Constantinople  have  been  misrepresented — 
slandered.  I  have  always  been  led  to  suppose  that 
they  were  so  thick  in  the  streets  that  they  blocked 
the  way;  that  they  moved  about  in  organized  com- 
panies, platoons,  and  regiments,  and  took  what  they 
wanted  by  determined  and  ferocious  assault;  and 
that  at  night  they  drowned  all  other  sounds  with 
their  terrible  howlings.  The  dogs  I  see  here  cannot 
be  those  I  have  read  of. 

I  find  them  everywhere,  but  not  in  strong  force. 
The  most  I  have  found  together  has  been  about 
ten  or  twenty.  And  night  or  day  a  fair  proportion  of 
them  were  sound  asleep.  Those  that  were  not  asleep 
always  looked  as  if  they  wanted  to  be.  I  never  saw 
such  utterly  wretched,  starving,  sad-visaged,  broken- 
hearted looking  curs  in  my  life.  It  seemed  a  grim 
satire  to  accuse  such  brutes  as  these  of  taking  things 
by  force  of  arms.  They  hardly  seemed  to  have 
strength  enough  or  ambition  enough  to  walk  across 
the  street — I  do  not  know  that  I  have  seen  one  walk- 
that  far  yet.  They  are  mangy  and  bruised  and 
mutilated,  and  often  you  see  one  with  the  hair  singed 
off  him  in  such  wide  and  well-defined  tracts  that  he 
looks  like  a  map  of  the  new  Territories.  They  are 
the  sorriest  beasts  that  breathe — the  most  abject — 
the  most  pitiful.  In  their  faces  is  a  settled  expression 
of  melancholy,  an  air  of  hopeless  despondency.  The 
hairless  patches  on  a  scalded  dog  are  preferred  by 
the  fleas  of  Constantinople  to  a  wider  range  on  a 
healthier  dog;  and  the  exposed  places  suit  the  fleas 
exactly.  I  saw  a  dog  of  this  kind  start  to  nibble  at 
a  flea — a.  fly  attracted  his  attention,  and  he  made  a 

80 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

snatch  at  him;  the  flea  called  for  him  once  more, 
and  that  forever  unsettled  him;  he  looked  sadly  at 
his  flea-pasture,  then  sadly  looked  at  his  bald  spot. 
Then  he  heaved  a  sigh  and  dropped  his  head  re- 
signedly upon  his  paws.  He  was  not  equal  to  the 
situation. 

The  dogs  sleep  in  the  streets,  all  over  the  city. 
From  one  end  of  the  street  to  the  other,  I  suppose 
they  will  average  about  eight  or  ten  to  a  block. 
Sometimes,  of  course,  there  are  fifteen  or  twenty  to 
a  block.  They  do  not  belong  to  anybody,  and  they 
seem  to  have  no  close  personal  friendships  among 
each  other.  But  they  district  the  city  themselves, 
and  the  dogs  of  each  district,  whether  it  be  half  a 
block  in  extent,  or  ten  blocks,  have  to  remain  within 
its  bounds.  Woe  to  a  dog  if  he  crosses  the  line! 
His  neighbors  would  snatch  the  balance  of  his  hair 
off  in  a  second.  So  it  is  said.  But  they  don't 
look  it. 

They  sleep  in  the  streets  these  days.  They  are  my 
compass — my  guide.  When  I  see  the  dogs  sleep 
placidly  on,  while  men,  sheep,  geese,  and  all  moving 
things  turn  out  and  go  around  them,  I  know  I  am 
not  in  the  great  street  where  the  hotel  is,  and  must 
go  further.  In  the  Grand  Rue  the  dogs  have  a  sort 
of  air  of  being  on  the  lookout — an  air  born  of  being 
obliged  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  many  carriages 
every  day — and  that  expression  one  recognizes  in  a 
moment.  It  does  not  exist  upon  the  face  of  any 
dog  without  the  confines  of  that  street.  All  others 
sleep  placidly  and  keep  no  watch.  They  would  not 
movp.  though  the  Sultan  himself  passed  by. 

81 


MARK    TWAIN 

In  one  narrow  street  (but  none  of  them  are  wide) 
I  saw  three  dogs  lying  coiled  up,  about  a  foot  or  two 
apart.  End  to  end  they  lay,  and  so  they  just  bridged 
the  street  neatly,  from  gutter  to  gutter.  A  drove  of 
a  hundred  sheep  came  along.  They  stepped  right 
over  the  dogs,  the  rear  crowding  the  front,  impatient 
to  get  on.  The  dogs  looked  lazily  up,  flinched  a 
little  when  the  impatient  feet  of  the  sheep  touched 
their  raw  backs — sighed,  and  lay  peacefully  down 
again.  No  talk  could  be  plainer  than  that.  So 
some  of  the  sheep  jumped  over  them  and  others 
scrambled  between,  occasionally  chipping  a  leg  with 
their  sharp  hoofs,  and  when  the  whole  flock  had 
made  the  trip,  the  dogs  sneezed  a  little,  in  the  cloud 
of  dust,  but  never  budged  their  bodies  an  inch.  I 
thought  I  was  lazy,  but  I  am  a  steam-engine  com- 
pared to  a  Constantinople  dog.  But  was  not  that  a 
singular  scene  for  a  city  of  a  million  inhabitants? 

These  dogs  are  the  scavengers  of  the  city.  That 
is  their  official  position,  and  a  hard  one  it  is.  How- 
ever, it  is  their  protection.  But  for  their  usefulness 
in  partially  cleansing  these  terrible  streets,  they 
would  not  be  tolerated  long.  They  eat  anything  and 
everything  that  comes  in  their  way,  from  melon 
rinds  and  spoiled  grapes  up  through  all  the  grades 
and  species  of  dirt  and  refuse  to  their  own  dead 
friends  and  relatives — and  yet  they  are  always  lean, 
always  hungry,  always  despondent.  The  people 
are  loth  to  kill  them — do  not  kill  them,  in  fact. 
The  Turks  have  an  innate  antipathy  to  taking  the  life 
of  any  dumb  animal,  it  is  said.  But  they  do  worse. 
They  hang  and  kick  and  stone  and  scald  these 

&2 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

wretched  creatures  to  the  very  verge  of  death,  and 
then  leave  them  to  live  and  suffer. 

Once  a  Sultan  proposed  to  kill  off  all  the  dogs 
here,  and  did  begin  the  work — but  the  populace 
raised  such  a  howl  of  horror  about  it  that  the  mas- 
sacre was  stayed.  After  a  while,  he  proposed  to  re- 
move them  all  to  an  island  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora. 
No  objection  was  offered,  and  a  ship-load  or  so  was 
taken  away.  But  when  it  came  to  be  known  that 
somehow  or  other  the  dogs  never  got  to  the  island, 
but  always  fell  overboard  in  the  night  and  perished, 
another  howl  was  raised  and  the  transportation 
scheme  was  dropped. 

So  the  dogs  remain  in  peaceable  possession  of  the 
streets.  I  do  not  say  that  they  do  not  howl  at 
night,  nor  that  they  do  not  attack  people  who  have 
not  a  red  fez  on  their  heads.  I  only  say  that  it 
would  be  mean  for  me  to  accuse  them  of  these  un- 
seemly things  who  have  not  seen  them  do  them 
with  my  own  eyes  or  heard  them  with  my  own 
ears. 

I  was  a  little  surprised  to  see  Turks  and  Greeks 
playing  newsboy  right  here  in  the  mysterious  land 
where  the  giants  and  genii  of  the  Arabian  Nights 
once  dwelt — where  winged  horses  and  hydra-headed 
dragons  guarded  enchanted  castles — where  Princes 
and  Princesses  flew  through  the  air  on  carpets  that 
obeyed  a  mystic  talisman — where  cities  whose 
houses  were  made  of  precious  stones  sprang  up  in  a 
night  under  the  hand  of  the  magician,  and  where 
busy  marts  were  suddenly  stricken  with  a  spell  and 
each  citizen  lay  or  sat,  or  stood  with  weapon  raised 

83 


MARK    TWAIN 

or  foot  advanced,  just  as  he  was,  speechless  and 
motionless,  till  time  had  told  a  hundred  years! 

It  was  curious  to  see  newsboys  selling  papers  in  so 
dreamy  a  land  as  that.  And,  to  say  truly,  it  is  com- 
paratively a  new  thing  here.  The  selling  of  news- 
papers had  its  birth  in  Constantinople  about  a  year 
ago,  and  was  a  child  of  the  Prussian  and  Austrian 
war. 

There  is  one  paper  published  here  in  the  English 
language — the  Levant  Herald — and  there  are  gen- 
erally a  number  of  Greek  and  a  few  French  papers 
rising  and  falling,  struggling  up  and  falling  again. 
Newspapers  are  not  popular  with  the  Sultan's  Gov- 
ernment. They  do  not  understand  journalism.  The 
proverb  says,  "The  unknown  is  always  great."  To 
the  court,  the  newspaper  is  a  mysterious  and  rascally 
institution.  They  know  what  a  pestilence  is,  be- 
cause they  have  one  occasionally  that  thins  the  peo- 
ple out  at  the  rate  of  two  thousand  a  day,  and  they 
regard  a  newspaper  as  a  mild  form  of  pestilence. 
When  it  goes  astray,  they  suppress  it — pounce  upon 
it  without  warning,  and  throttle  it.  When  it  don't 
go  astray  for  a  long  time,  they  get  suspicious  and 
throttle  it  anyhow,  because  they  think  it  is  hatching 
deviltry.  Imagine  the  Grand  Vizier  in  solemn  coun- 
cil with  the  magnates  of  the  realm,  spelling  his  way 
through  the  hated  newspaper,  and  finally  delivering 
his  profound  decision:  "This  thing  means  mischief 
— it  is  too  darkly,  too  suspiciously  inoffensive — 
suppress  it!  Warn  the  publisher  that  we  cannot 
have  this  sort  of  thing:  put  the  editor  in  prison!" 

The  newspaper  business  has  its  inconveniences  in 

84 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Constantinople.  Two  Greek  papers  and  one  French 
one  were  suppressed  here  within  a  few  days  of  each 
other.  No  victories  of  the  Cretans  are  allowed  to  be 
printed.  From  time  to  time  the  Grand  Vizier  sends 
a  notice  to  the  various  editors  that  the  Cretan  insur- 
rection is  entirely  suppressed,  and  although  that 
editor  knows  better,  he  still  has  to  print  the  notice. 
The  Levant  Herald  is  too  fond  of  speaking  praise- 
fully  of  Americans  to  be  popular  with  the  Sultan, 
who  does  not  relish  our  sympathy  with  the  Cretans, 
and  therefore  that  paper  has  to  be  particularly  cir- 
cumspect in  order  to  keep  out  of  trouble.  Once  the 
editor,  forgetting  the  official  notice  in  his  paper  that 
the  Cretans  were  crushed  out,  printed  a  letter  of  a 
very  different  tenor,  from  the  American  Consul  in 
Crete,  and  was  fined  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
for  it.  Shortly  he  printed  another  from  the  same 
source  and  was  imprisoned  three  months  for  his 
pains.  I  think  I  could  get  the  assistant  editorship 
of  the  Levant  Herald,  but  I  am  going  to  try  to 
worry  along  without  it. 

To  suppress  a  paper  here  involves  the  ruin  of  the 
publisher,  almost.  But  in  Naples  I  think  they 
speculate  on  misfortunes  of  that  kind.  Papers  are 
suppressed  there  every  day,  and  spring  up  the  next 
day  under  a  new  name.  During  the  ten  days  or  a 
fortnight  we  stayed  there  one  paper  was  murdered 
and  resurrected  twice.  The  newsboys  are  smart 
there,  just  as  they  are  elsewhere.  They  take  advan- 
tage of  popular  weaknesses.  When  they  find  they 
are  not  likely  to  sell  out,  they  approach  a  citizen 
mysteriously,  and  say  in  a  low  voice — "Last  copy, 

85 


MARK    TWAIN 

sir:  double  price;  paper  just  been  suppressed!" 
The  man  buys  it,  of  course,  and  finds  nothing  in  it. 
They  do  say — I  do  not  vouch  for  it — but  they  do 
say  that  men  sometimes  print  a  vast  edition  of  a 
paper,  with  a  ferociously  seditious  article  in  it,  dis- 
tribute it  quickly  among  the  newsboys,  and  clear  out 
till  the  Government's  indignation  cools.  It  pays 
well.  Confiscation  don't  amount  to  anything.  The 
type  and  presses  are  not  worth  taking  care  of. 

There  is  only  one  English  newspaper  in  Naples. 
It  has  seventy  subscribers.  The  publisher  is  getting 
rich  very  deliberately — very  deliberately  indeed. 

I  shall  never  want  another  Turkish  lunch.  The 
cooking  apparatus  was  in  a  little  lunch-room,  near 
the  bazar,  and  it  was  all  open  to  the  street.  The 
cook  was  slovenly,  and  so  was  the  table,  and  it  had 
no  cloth  on  it.  The  fellow  took  a  mass  of  sausage- 
meat  and  coated  it  round  a  wire  and  laid  it  on  a 
charcoal  fire  to  cook.  When  it  was  done,  he  laid  it 
aside  and  a  dog  walked  sadly  in  and  nipped  it.  He 
smelt  it  first,  and  probably  recognized  the  remains  of 
a  friend.  The  cook  took  it  away  from  him  and 
laid  it  before  us.  Jack  said,  "I  pass" — he  plays 
euchre  sometimes — and  we  all  passed  in  turn.  Then 
the  cook  baked  a  broad,  flat,  wheaten  cake,  greased 
it  well  with  the  sausage,  and  started  toward  us  with 
it.  It  dropped  in  the  dirt,  and  he  picked  it  up  and 
polished  it  on  his  breeches,  and  laid  it  before  us. 
Jack  said,  "I  pass."  We  all  passed.  He  put  some 
eggs  in  a  frying-pan,  and  stood  pensively  prying 
slabs  of  meat  from  between  his  teeth  with  a  fork. 
Then  he  used  the  fork  to  turn  the  eggs  with — and 

86 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

brought  them  along.  Jack  said  "Pass  again."  All 
followed  suit.  We  did  not  know  what  to  do,  and  so 
we  ordered  a  new  ration  of  sausage.  The  cook  got 
out  his  wire,  apportioned  a  proper  amount  of 
sausage-meat,  spat  on  his  hands,  and  fell  to  work! 
This  time,  with  one  accord,  we  all  passed  out.  We 
paid  and  left.  That  is  all  I  learned  about  Turkish 
lunches.  A  Turkish  lunch  is  good,  no  doubt,  but 
it  has  its  little  drawbacks. 

When  I  think  how  I  have  been  swindled  by  books 
of  Oriental  travel,  I  want  a  tourist  for  breakfast.  For 
years  and  years  I  have  dreamed  of  the  wonders  of 
the  Turkish  bath ;  for  years  and  years  I  have  prom- 
ised myself  that  I  would  yet  enjoy  one.  Many  and 
many  a  time,  in  fancy,  I  have  lain  in  the  marble 
bath,  and  breathed  the  slumbrous  fragrance  of  East- 
ern spices  that  filled  the  air;  then  passed  through  a 
weird  and  complicated  system  of  pulling  and  hauling 
and  drenching  and  scrubbing,  by  a  gang  of  naked 
savages  who  loomed  vast  and  vaguely  through  the 
steaming  mists,  like  demons;  then  rested  for  a 
while  on  a  divan  fit  for  a  king;  then  passed  through 
another  complex  ordeal,  and  one  more  fearful  than 
the  first;  and,  finally,  swathed  in  soft  fabrics,  been 
conveyed  to  a  princely  saloon  and  laid  on  a  bed  of 
eiderdown,  where  eunuchs,  gorgeous  of  costume, 
fanned  me  while  I  drowsed  and  dreamed,  or  content- 
edly gazed  at  the  rich  hangings  of  the  apartment,  the 
soft  carpets,  the  sumptuous  furniture,  the  pictures, 
and  drank  delicious  coffee,  smoked  the  soothing 
narghili,  and  dropped,  at  the  last,  into  tranquil 
repose,  lulled  by  sensuous  odors  from  unseen  censers, 

87 


MARK    TWAIN 

by  the  gentle  influence  of  the  narghili's  Persian 
tobacco,  and  by  the  music  of  fountains  that  coun- 
terfeited the  pattering  of  summer  rain. 

That  was  the  picture,  just  as  I  got  it  from  incen- 
diary books  of  travel.  It  was  a  poor,  miserable  im- 
posture. The  reality  is  no  more  like  it  than  the  Five 
Points  are  like  the  Garden  of  Eden.  They  received 
me  in  a  great  court,  paved  with  marble  slabs ;  around 
it  were  broad  galleries,  one  above  another,  carpeted 
with  seedy  matting,  railed  with  unpainted  balus- 
trades, and  furnished  with  huge  rickety  chairs, 
cushioned  with  rusty  old  mattresses,  indented  with 
impressions  left  by  the  forms  of  nine  successive 
generations  of  men  who  had  reposed  upon  them.  The 
place  was  vast,  naked,  dreary;  its  court  a  barn,  its 
galleries  stalls  for  human  horses.  The  cadaverous, 
half-nude  varlets  that  served  in  the  establishment  had 
nothing  of  poetry  in  their  appearance,  nothing  of 
romance,  nothing  of  Oriental  splendor.  They  shed 
no  entrancing  odors — just  the  contrary.  Their  hun- 
gry eyes  and  their  lank  forms  continually  suggested 
one  glaring,  unsentimental  fact — they  wanted  what 
they  term  in  California  "a  square  meal." 

I  went  into  one  of  the  racks  and  undressed.  An 
unclean  starveling  wrapped  a  gaudy  table-cloth  about 
his  loins,  and  hung  a  white  rag  over  my  shoulders. 
If  I  had  had  a  tub  then,  it  would  have  come  natural 
to  me  to  take  in  washing.  I  was  then  conducted 
down-stairs  into  the  wet,  slippery  court,  and  the  first 
things  that  attracted  my  attention  were  my  heels. 
My  fall  excited  no  comment.  They  expected  it,  no 
doubt.     It  belonged  in  the  list  of  softening,  sensuous 

88 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

influences  peculiar  to  this  home  of  Eastern  luxury. 
It  was  softening  enough,  certainly,  but  its  applica- 
tion was  not  happy.  They  now  gave  me  a  pair  of 
wooden  clogs — benches  in  miniature,  with  leather 
straps  over  them  to  confine  my  feet  (which  they 
would  have  done,  only  I  do  not  wear  No.  i3's). 
These  things  dangled  uncomfortably  by  the  straps 
when  I  lifted  up  my  feet,  and  came  down  in  awkward 
and  unexpected  places  when  I  put  them  on  the  floor 
again,  and  sometimes  turned  sideways  and  wrenched 
my  ankles  out  of  joint.  However,  it  was  all  Oriental 
luxury,  and  I  dM  what  I  could  to  enjoy  it. 

They  put  me  in  another  part  of  the  barn  and  laid 
me  on  a  stuffy  sort  of  pallet,  which  was  not  made  of 
cloth  of  gold,  or  Persian  shawls,  but  was  merely  the 
unpretending  sort  of  thing  I  have  seen  in  the  negro 
quarters  of  Arkansas.  There  was  nothing  whatever 
in  this  dim  marble  prison  but  five  more  of  these 
biers.  It  was  a  very  solemn  place.  I  expected  that 
the  spiced  odors  of  Araby  were  going  to  steal  over 
my  senses,  now,  but  they  did  not.  A  copper-colored 
skeleton,  with  a  rag  around  him,  brought  me  a  glass 
decanter  of  water,  with  a  lighted  tobacco  pipe  in  the 
top  of  it,  and  a  pliant  stem  a  yard  long,  with  a  brass 
mouthpiece  to  it. 

It  was  the  famous  "narghili"  of  the  East — the 
thing  the  Grand  Turk  smokes  in  the  pictures.  This 
began  to  Took  like  luxury.  I  took  one  blast  at  it, 
and  it  was  sufficient;  the  smoke  went  in  a  great 
volume  down  into  my  stomach,  my  lungs,  even  into 
the  uttermost  parts  of  my  frame.  I  exploded  one 
mighty  cough,  and  it  was  as  if  Vesuvius  had  let  go. 

8q 


MARK    TWAIN 

For  the  next  five  minutes  I  smoked  at  every  pore,  like 
a  frame  house  that  is  on  fire  on  the  inside.  Not  any 
more  narghili  for  me.  The  smoke  had  a  vile  taste, 
and  the  taste  of  a  thousand  infrdel  tongues  that  re- 
mained on  that  brass  mouthpiece  was  viler  still.  I 
was  getting  discouraged.  Whenever,  hereafter,  I  see 
the  cross-legged  Grand  Turk  smoking  his  narghili, 
in  pretended  bliss,  on  the  outside  of  a  paper  of  Con- 
necticut tobacco,  I  shall  know  him  for  the  shameless 
humbug  he  is. 

This  prison  was  filled  with  hot  air.  When  I  had 
got  warmed  up  sufficiently  to  prepare  me  for  a  still 
warmer  temperature,  they  took  me  where  it  was — 
into  a  marble  room,  wet,  slippery,  and  steamy,  and 
laid  me  out  on  a  raised  platform  in  the  center.  It 
was  very  warm.  Presently  my  man  sat  me  down 
by  a  tank  of  hot  water,  drenched  me  well,  gloved  his 
hand  with  a  coarse  mitten,  and  began  to  polish  me 
all  over  with  it.  I  began  to  smell  disagreeably. 
The  more  he  polished  the  worse  I  smelt.  It  was 
alarming.     I  said  to  him: 

'T  perceive  that  I  am  pretty  far  gone.  It  is 
plain  that  I  ought  to  be  buried  without  any  unnec- 
essary delay.  Perhaps  you  had  better  go  after  my 
friends  at  once,  because  the  weather  is  warm,  and 
I  cannot  'keep'  long." 

He  went  on  scrubbing,  and  paid  no  attention.  I 
soon  saw  that  he  was  reducing  my  size.  He  bore 
hard  on  his  mitten,  and  from  under  it  rolled  little 
cylinders,  like  macaroni.  It  could  not  be  dirt,  for 
it  was  too  white.  He  pared  me  down  in  this  way 
for  a  long  time.     Finally  I  said: 

90 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"It  is  a  tedious  process.  It  will  take  hours  to 
trim  me  to  the  size  you  want  me;  I  will  wait;  go 
and  borrow  a  jack-plane." 

He  paid  no  attention  at  all. 

After  a  while  he  brought  a  basin,  some  soap,  and 
something  that  seemed  to  be  the  tail  of  a  horse.  He 
made  up  a  prodigious  quantity  of  soap-suds,  deluged 
me  with  them  from  head  to  foot,  without  warning 
me  to  shut  my  eyes,  and  then  swabbed  me  viciously 
with  the  horse-tail.  Then  he  left  me  there,  a  snowy 
statue  of  lather,  and  went  away.  When  I  got  tired 
of  waiting  I  went  and  hunted  him  up.  He  was 
propped  against  the  wall,  in  another  room,  asleep. 
I  woke  him.  He  was  not  disconcerted.  He  took 
me  back  and  flooded  me  with  hot  water,  then  tur- 
baned  my  head,  swathed  me  with  dry  table-cloths, 
and  conducted  me  to  a  latticed  chicken-coop  in  one 
of  the  galleries,  and  pointed  to  one  of  those  Ar- 
kansas beds.  I  mounted  it,  and  vaguely  expected 
the  odors  of  Araby  again.     They  did  not  come. 

The  blank,  unornamented  coop  had  nothing  about 
it  of  that  oriental  voluptuousness  one  reads  of  so 
much.  It  was  more  suggestive  of  the  county  hospi- 
tal than  anything  else.  The  skinny  servitor  brought 
a  narghili,  and  I  got  him  to  take  it  out  again  without 
wasting  any  time  about  it.  Then  he  brought  the 
world-renowned  Turkish  coffee  that  poets  have  sung 
so  rapturously  for  many  generations,  and  I  seized 
upon  it  as  the  last  hope  that  was  left  of  my  old 
dreams  of  Eastern  luxury.  It  was  another  fraud. 
Of  all  the  unchristian  beverages  that  ever  passed  my 
lips,  Turkish  coffee  is  the  worst.     The  cup  is  small, 

01 


MARK    TWAIN 

it  is  smeared  with  grounds ;  the  coffee  is  black,  thick, 
unsavory  of  smell,  and  execrable  in  taste.  The  bot- 
tom of  the  cup  has  a  muddy  sediment  in  it  half  an 
inch  deep.  This  goes  down  your  throat,  and  por- 
tions of  it  lodge  by  the  way,  and  produce  a  tickling 
aggravation  that  keeps  you  barking  and  coughing 
for  an  hour. 

Here  endeth  my  experience  of  the  celebrated  Turk- 
ish bath,  and  here  also  endeth  my  dream  of  the  bliss 
the  mortal  revels  in  who  passes  through  it.  It  is  a 
malignant  swindle.  The  man  who  enjoys  it  is  quali- 
fied to  enjoy  anything  that  is  repulsive  to  sight  or 
sense,  and  he  that  can  invest  it  with  a  charm  of 
poetry  is  able  to  do  the  same  with  anything  else  in 
the  world  that  is  tedious,  and  wretched,  and  dismal, 
and  nasty. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WE  left  a  dozen  passengers  in  Constantinople, 
and  sailed  through  the  beautiful  Bosporus 
and  far  up  into  the  Black  Sea.  We  left  them  in  the 
clutches  of  the  celebrated  Turkish  guide,  "  Far-away 
Moses,"  who  will  seduce  them  into  buying  a 
ship-load  of  attar  of  roses,  splendid  Turkish  vest- 
ments, and  all  manner  of  curious  things  they  can 
never  have  any  use  for.  Murray's  invaluable  guide- 
books have  mentioned  Far-away  Moses'  name,  and 
he  is  a  made  man.  He  rejoices  daily  in  the  fact 
that  he  is  a  recognized  celebrity.  However,  we  can- 
not alter  our  established  customs  to  please  the  whims 
of  guides;  we  cannot  show  partialities  this  late  in 
the  day.  Therefore,  ignoring  this  fellow's  brilliant 
fame,  and  ignoring  the  fanciful  name  he  takes  such 
pride  in,  we  called  him  Ferguson,  just  as  we  had 
done  with  all  other  guides.  It  has  kept  him  in  a 
state  of  smothered  exasperation  all  the  time.  Yet 
we  meant  him  no  harm.  After  he  has  gotten  him- 
self up  regardless  of  expense,  in  showy,  baggy 
trousers,  yellow,  pointed  slippers,  fiery  fez,  silken 
jacket  of  blue,  voluminous  waist  -  sash  of  fancy 
Persian  stuff  filled  with  a  battery  of  silver-mounted 
horse-pistols,  and  has  strapped  on  his  terrible 
simitar,  he  considers  it  an  unspeakable  humiliation 

93 


MARK    TWAIN 

to  be  called  Ferguson.  It  cannot  be  helped.  All 
guides  are  Ferguson  to  us.  We  cannot  master  their 
dreadful  foreign  names. 

Sebastopol  is  probably  the  worst  battered  town  in 
Russia  or  anywhere  else.  But  we  ought  to  be 
pleased  with  it,  nevertheless,  for  we  have  been  in  no 
country  yet  where  we  have  been  so  kindly  received, 
and  where  we  felt  that  to  be  Americans  was  a  suffi- 
cient vise  for  our  passports.  The  moment  the  anchor 
was  down,  the  Governor  of  the  town  immediately 
despatched  an  officer  on  board  to  inquire  if  he  could 
be  of  any  assistance  to  us,  and  to  invite  us  to  make 
ourselves  at  home  in  Sebastopol!  If  you  know 
Russia,  you  know  that  this  was  a  wild  stretch  of 
hospitality.  They  are  usually  so  suspicious  of  stran- 
gers that  they  worry  them  excessively  with  the  delays 
and  aggravations  incident  to  a  complicated  passport 
system.  Had  we  come  from  any  other  country  we 
could  not  have  had  permission  to  enter  Sebastopol 
and  leave  again  under  three  days — but  as  it  was,  we 
were  at  liberty  to  go  and  come  when  and  where  we 
pleased.  Everybody  in  Constantinople  warned  us  to 
be  very  careful  about  our  passports,  see  that  they 
were  strictly  en  regie,  and  never  to  mislay  them  for  a 
moment :  and  they  told  us  of  numerous  instances  of 
Englishmen  and  others  who  were  delayed  days, 
weeks,  and  even  months,  in  Sebastopol,  on  account 
of  trifling  informalities  in  their  passports,  and  for 
which  they  were  not  to  blame.  I  had  lost  my  pass- 
port, and  was  traveling  under  my  room-mate's,  who 
stayed  behind  in  Constantinople  to  await  our  return. 
To  read  the  description  of  him  in  that  passport  and 

94 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

then  look  at  me,  any  man  could  see  that  I  was  no 
more  like  him  than  I  am  like  Hercules.  So  I  went 
into  the  harbor  of  Sebastopol  with  fear  and  trem- 
bling— full  of  a  vague,  horrible  apprehension  that  I 
was  going  to  be  found  out  and  hanged.  But  all  that 
time  my  true  passport  had  been  floating  gallantly 
overhead — and  behold  it  was  only  our  flag.  They 
never  asked  us  for  any  other. 

We  have  had  a  great  many  Russian  and  English 
gentlemen  and  ladies  on  board  to-day,  and  the  time 
has  passed  cheerfully  away.  They  were  all  happy- 
spirited  people,  and  I  never  heard  our  mother-tongue 
sound  so  pleasantly  as  it  did  when  it  fell  from  those 
English  lips  in  this  far-off  land.  I  talked  to  the 
Russians  a  good  deal,  just  to  be  friendly,  and  they 
talked  to  me  from  the  same  motive;  I  am  sure  that 
both  enjoyed  the  conversation,  but  never  a  word  of 
it  either  of  us  understood.  I  did  most  of  my  talking 
to  those  English  people  though,  and  I  am  sorry  we 
cannot  carry  some  of  them  along  with  us. 

We  have  gone  whithersoever  we  chose,  to-day,  and 
have  met  with  nothing  but  the  kindest  attentions.  No- 
body inquired  whether  we  had  any  passports  or  not. 

Several  of  the  officers  of  the  government  have 
suggested  that  we  take  the  ship  to  a  little  watering- 
place  thirty  miles  from  here,  and  pay  the  Emperor 
of  Russia  a  visit.  He  is  rusticating  there.  These 
officers  said  they  would  take  it  upon  themselves  to 
insure  us  a  cordial  reception.  They  said  if  we 
would  go,  they  would  not  only  telegraph  the  Em- 
peror, but  send  a  special  courier  overland  to  announce 
our  coming.     Our  time  is  so  short,  though,  and  more 

95 


MARK    TWAIN 

especially  our  coal  is  so  nearly  out,  that  we  judged 
it  best  to  forego  the  rare  pleasure  of  holding  social 
intercourse  with  an  Emperor. 

Ruined  Pompeii  is  in  good  condition  compared  to 
Sebastopol.  Here,  you  may  look  in  whatsoever 
direction  you  please,  and  your  eye  encounters 
scarcely  anything  but  ruin,  ruin,  ruin! — fragments 
of  houses,  crumbled  walls,  torn  and  ragged  hills, 
devastation  everywhere !  It  is  as  if  a  mighty  earth- 
quake had  spent  all  its  terrible  forces  upon  this  one 
little  spot.  For  eighteen  long  months  the  storms  of 
war  beat  upon  the  helpless  town,  and  left  it  at  last 
the  saddest  wreck  that  ever  the  sun  has  looked 
upon.  Not  one  solitary  house  escaped  unscathed — 
not  one  remained  habitable,  even.  Such  utter  and 
complete  ruin  one  could  hardly  conceive  of.  The 
nouses  had  all  been  solid,  dressed-stone  structures; 
most  of  them  were  plowed  through  and  through  by 
cannon-balls — unroofed  and  sliced  down  from  eaves 
to  foundation — and  now  a  row  of  them,  half  a  mile 
long,  looks  merely  like  an  endless  procession  of 
battered  chimneys.  No  semblance  of  a  house  re- 
mains in  such  as  these.  Some  of  the  larger  build- 
ings had  corners  knocked  off;  pillars  cut  in  two; 
cornices  smashed;  holes  driven  straight  through  the 
walls.  Many  of  these  holes  are  as  round  and  as 
cleanly  cut  as  if  they  had  been  made  with  an  auger. 
Others  are  half  pierced  through,  and  the  clean 
impression  is  there  in  the  rock,  as  smooth  and  as 
shapely  as  if  it  were  done  in  putty.  Here  and  there 
a  ball  still  sticks  in  a  wall,  and  from  it  iron  tears 
trickle  down  and  discolor  the  stone. 

96 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

The  battle-fields  were  pretty  close  together.  The 
Malakoff  tower  is  on  a  hill  which  is  right  in  the  edge 
of  the  town.  The  Redan  was  within  rifle-shot  of 
the  Malakoff;  Inkerman  was  a  mile  away;  and 
Balaklava  removed  but  an  hour's  ride.  The  French 
trenches,  by  which  they  approached  and  invested 
the  Malakoff,  were  carried  so  close  under  its  sloping 
sides  that  one  might  have  stood  by  the  Russian  guns 
and  tossed  a  stone  into  them.  Repeatedly,  during 
three  terrible  days,  they  swarmed  up  the  little 
Malakoff  hill,  and  were  beaten  back  with  terrible 
slaughter.  Finally,  they  captured  the  place,  and 
drove  the  Russians  out,  who  then  tried  to  retreat 
into  the  town,  but  the  English  had  taken  the  Redan, 
and  shut  them  off  with  a  wall  of  flame;  there  was 
nothing  for  them  to  do  but  go  back  and  retake  the 
Malakoff  or  die  under  its  guns.  They  did  go  back; 
they  took  the  Malakoff  and  retook  it  two  or  three 
times,  but  their  desperate  valor  could  not  avail,  and 
they  had  to  give  up  at  last. 

These  fearful  fields,  where  such  tempests  of  death 
used  to  rage,  are  peaceful  enough  now;  no  sound  is 
heard,  hardly  a  living  thing  moves  about  them,  they 
are  lonely  and  silent — their  desolation  is  complete. 

There  was  nothing  else  to  do,  and  so  everybody 
went  to  hunting  relics.  They  have  stocked  the  ship 
with  them.  They  brought  them  from  the  Malakoff, 
from  the  Redan,  Inkerman,  Balaklava — everywhere. 
They  have  brought  cannon-balls,  broken  ramrods, 
fragments  of  shell — iron  enough  to  freight  a  sloop. 
Some  have  even  brought  bones — brought  them 
laboriously  from  great  distances,  and  were  grieved 

97 


MARK    TWAIN 

to  hear  the  surgeon  pronounce  them  only  bones  of 
mules  and  oxen.  I  knew  Blucher  would  not  lose  an 
opportunity  like  this.  He  brought  a  sack  full  on 
board  and  was  going  for  another.  I  prevailed  upon 
him  not  to  go.  He  has  already  turned  his  state- 
room into  a  museum  of  worthless  trumpery,  which 
he  has  gathered  up  in  his  travels.  He  is  labeling 
his  trophies,  now.  I  picked  up  one  a  while  ago,  and 
found  it  marked  "Fragment  of  a  Russian  General." 
I  carried  it  out  to  get  a  better  light  upon  it — it  was 
nothing  but  a  couple  of  teeth  and  part  of  the  jaw- 
bone of  a  horse.     I  said  with  some  asperity : 

"Fragment  of  a  Russian  General!  This  is  ab- 
surd.    Are  you  never  going  to  learn  any  sense?" 

He  only  said:  "Go  slow — the  old  woman  won't 
know  any  different."     [His  aunt.] 

This  person  gathers  mementoes  with  a  perfect 
recklessness,  nowadays;  mixes  them  all  up  together, 
and  then  serenely  labels  them  without  any  regard  to 
truth,  propriety,  or  even  plausibility.  I  have  found 
him  breaking  a  stone  in  two,  and  labeling  half  of  it 
"Chunk  busted  from  the  pulpit  of  Demosthenes," 
and  the  other  half  "Dornick  from  the  Tomb  of 
Abelard  and  Heloise."  I  have  known  him  to  gather 
up  a  handful  of  pebbles  by  the  roadside,  and  bring 
them  on  board  ship  and  label  them  as  coming  from 
twenty  celebrated  localities  five  hundred  miles  apart. 
I  remonstrate  against  these  outrages  upon  reason 
and  truth,  of  course,  but  it  does  no  good.  I  get  the 
same  tranquil,  unanswerable  reply  every  time: 

"It   don't  signify — the  old  woman  won't  know 

any  different." 

98 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Ever  since  we  three  or  four  fortunate  ones  made 
the  midnight  trip  to  Athens,  it  has  afforded  him 
genuine  satisfaction  to  give  everybody  in  the  ship  a 
pebble  from  the  Mars  Hill  where  St.  Paul  preached. 
He  got  all  those  pebbles  on  the  seashore,  abreast 
the  ship,  but  professes  to  have  gathered  them  from 
one  of  our  party.  However,  it  is  not  of  any  use  for 
me  to  expose  the  deception — it  affords  him  pleas- 
ure, and  does  no  harm  to  anybody.  He  says  he 
never  expects  to  run  out  of  mementoes  of  St.  Paul 
as  long  as  he  is  in  reach  of  a  sand-bank.  Well,  he 
is  no  worse  than  others.  I  notice  that  all  travelers 
supply  deficiencies  in  their  collections  in  the  same 
way.  I  shall  never  have  any  confidence  in  such 
things  again  while  I  live. 


CHAPTER  IX 

WE  have  got  so  far  East  now — a  hundred  and 
fifty-five  degrees  of  longitude  from  San  Fran- 
cisco— that  my  watch  cannot  "keep  the  hang"  of 
the  time  any  more.  It  has  grown  discouraged,  and 
stopped.  I  think  it  did  a  wise  thing.  The  differ- 
ence in  time  between  Sebastopol  and  the  Pacific 
coast  is  enormous.  When  it  is  six  o'clock  in  the 
morning  here,  it  is  somewhere  about  week  before 
last  in  California.  We  are  excusable  for  getting  a 
little  tangled  as  to  time.  These  distractions  and  dis- 
tresses about  the  time  have  worried  me  so  much  that 
I  was  afraid  my  mind  was  so  much  affected  that  I 
never  would  have  any  appreciation  of  time  again; 
but  when  I  noticed  how  handy  I  was  yet  about 
comprehending  when  it  was  dinner-time,  a  blessed 
tranquillity  settled  down  upon  me,  and  I  am  tortured 
with  doubts  and  fears  no  more. 

Odessa  is  about  twenty  hours'  run  from  Sebas- 
topol, and  is  the  most  northerly  port  in  the  Black 
Sea.  We  came  here  to  get  coal,  principally.  The 
city  has  a  population  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-three 
thousand,  and  is  growing  faster  than  any  other  small 
city  out  of  America.  It  is  a  free  port,  and  is  the 
great  grain  mart  of  this  particular  part  of  the  world, 
/.ts  roadstead  is  full  of  ships.     Engineers  are  at  work, 

ioo 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

now,  turning  the  open  roadstead  into  a  spacious 
artificial  harbor.  It  is  to  be  almost  inclosed  by 
massive  stone  piers,  one  of  which  will  extend  into 
the  sea  over  three  thousand  feet  in  a  straight  line. 
I  have  not  felt  so  much  at  home  for  a  long  time 
as  I  did  when  I  "raised  the  hill"  and  stood  in 
Odessa  for  the  first  time.  It  looked  just  like  an 
American  city;  fine,  broad  streets,  and  straight  as 
well;  low  houses  (two  or  three  stories),  wide,  neat, 
and  free  from  any  quaintness  of  architectural  orna- 
mentation; locust  trees  bordering  the  sidewalks 
(they  call  them  acacias);  a  stirring,  business  look 
about  the  streets  and  the  stores;  fast  walkers;  a 
familiar  new  look  about  the  houses  and  everything; 
yea,  and  a  driving  and  smothering  cloud  of  dust  that 
was  so  like  a  message  from  our  own  dear  native 
land  that  we  could  hardly  refrain  from  shedding  a 
few  grateful  tears  and  execrations  in  the  old  time- 
honored  American  way.  Look  up  the  street  or 
down  the  street,  this  way  or  that  way,  we  saw  only 
America!  There  was  not  one  thing  to  remind  us 
that  we  were  in  Russia.  We  walked  for  some  little 
distance,  reveling  in  this  home  vision,  and  then  we 
came  upon  a  church  and  a  hack-driver,  and  presto! 
the  illusion  vanished!  The  church  had  a  slender- 
spired  dome  that  rounded  inward  at  its  base,  and 
looked  like  a  turnip  turned  upside  down,  and  the 
hackman  seemed  to  be  dressed  in  a  long  petticoat 
without  any  hoops.  These  things  were  essentially 
foreign,  and  so  were  the  carriages — but  everybody 
knows  about  these  things,  and  there  is  no  occasion 
for  my  describing  them. 

IOI 


MARK    TWAIN 

We  were  only  to  stay  here  a  day  and  a  night  and 
take  in  coal ;  we  consulted  the  guide-books  and  were 
rejoiced  to  know  that  there  were  no  sights  in  Odessa 
to  see;  and  so  we  had  one  good,  untrammeled 
holiday  on  our  hands,  with  nothing  to  do  but  idle 
about  the  city  and  enjoy  ourselves.  We  sauntered 
through  the  markets  and  criticized  the  fearful  and 
wonderful  costumes  from  the  back  country;  exam- 
ined the  populace  as  far  as  eyes  could  do  it;  and 
closed  the  entertainment  with  an  ice-cream  debauch. 
We  do  not  get  ice-cream  everywhere,  and  so,  when 
we  do,  we  are  apt  to  dissipate  to  excess.  We  never 
cared  anything  about  ice-cream  at  home,  but  we 
look  upon  it  with  a  sort  of  idolatry  now  that  it  is 
so  scarce  in  these  red-hot  climates  of  the  East. 

We  only  found  two  pieces  of  statuary,  and  this 
was  another  blessing.  One  was  a  bronze  image  of 
the  Due  de  Richelieu,  grandnephew  of  the  splendid 
Cardinal.  It  stood  in  a  spacious,  handsome  prom- 
enade, overlooking  the  sea,  and  from  its  base  a  vast 
flight  of  stone  steps  led  down  to  the  harbor — two 
hundred  of  them,  fifty  feet  long,  and  a  wide  landing 
at  the  bottom  of  every  twenty.  It  is  a  noble  stair- 
case, and  from  a  distance  the  people  toiling  up  it 
looked  like  insects.  I  mention  this  statue  and  this 
stairway  because  they  have  their  story.  Richelieu 
founded  Odessa — watched  over  it  with  paternal 
care — labored  with  a  fertile  brain  and  a  wise  under- 
standing for  its  best  interests — spent  his  fortune 
freely  to  the  same  end — endowed  it  with  a  sound 
prosperity,  and  one  which  will  yet  make  it  one  of 
the  great  cities  of  the  Old  World — built  this  nobie 

102 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

stairway  with  money  from  his  own  private  purse — 
and —  Well,  the  people  for  whom  he  had  done 
so  much  let  him  walk  down  these  same  steps,  one 
day,  unattended,  old,  poor,  without  a  second  coat 
to  his  back;  and  when,  years  afterward,  he  died  in 
Sebastopol  in  poverty  and  neglect,  they  called  a 
meeting,  subscribed  liberally,  and  immediately 
erected  this  tasteful  monument  to  his  memory,  and 
named  a  great  street  after  him.  It  reminds  me  of 
what  Robert  Burns's  mother  said  when  they  erected 
a  stately  monument  to  his  memory:  "Ah,  Robbie, 
ye  asked  them  for  bread  and  they  hae  gi'en  ye  a 
stane." 

The  people  of  Odessa  have  warmly  recommended 
us  to  go  and  call  on  the  Emperor,  as  did  the  Sebas- 
topolians.  They  have  telegraphed  his  Majesty,  and 
he  has  signified  his  willingness  to  grant  us  an  audi- 
ence. So  we  are  getting  up  the  anchors  and  pre- 
paring to  sail  to  his  watering-place.  What  a  scratch- 
ing around  there  will  be  now!  what  a  holding  of 
important  meetings  and  appointing  of  solemn  com- 
mittees ! — and  what  a  furbishing  up  of  claw-hammer 
coats  and  white  silk  neckties !  As  this  fearful  ordeal 
we  are  about  to  pass  through  pictures  itself  to  my 
fancy  in  all  its  dread  sublimity,  1  begin  to  feel  my 
fierce  desire  to  converse  with  a  genuine  Emperor 
cooling  down  and  passing  away.  What  am  I  to  do 
with  my  hands?  What  am  I  to  do  with  my  feet? 
What  in  the  world  am  I  to  do  with  myself? 


CHAPTER  X 

WE  anchored  here  at  Yalta,  Russia,  two  or 
three  days  ago.  To  me  the  place  was  a 
vision  of  the  Sierras.  The  tall,  gray  mountains  that 
back  it,  their  sides  bristling  with  pines — cloven  with 
ravines — here  and  there  a  hoary  rock  towering  into 
view — long,  straight  streaks  sweeping  down  from  the 
summit  to  the  sea,  marking  the  passage  of  some  ava- 
lanche of  former  times — all  these  were  as  like  what 
one  sees  in  the  Sierras  as  if  the  one  were  a  portrait 
of  the  other.  The  little  village  of  Yalta  nestles  at 
the  foot  of  an  amphitheater  which  slopes  backward 
and  upward  to  the  wall  of  hills,  and  looks  as  if  it 
might  have  sunk  quietly  down  to  its  present  position 
from  a  higher  elevation.  This  depression  is  covered 
with  the  great  parks  and  gardens  of  noblemen,  and 
through  the  mass  of  green  foliage  the  bright  colors 
of  their  palaces  bud  out  here  and  there  like  flowers. 
It  is  a  beautiful  spot. 

We  had  the  United  States  consul  on  board — the 
Odessa  consul.  We  assembled  in  the  cabin  and 
commanded  him  to  tell  us  what  we  must  do  to 
be  saved,  and  tell  us  quickly.  He  made  a  speech. 
The  first  thing  he  said  fell  like  a  blight  on  every 
hopeful  spirit;  he  had  never  seen  a  court  reception. 
(Three  groans  for  the  consul.)     But  he  said  he  had 

104 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

seen  receptions  at  the  Governor- General's  in  Odessa, 
and  had  often  listened  to  people's  experiences  of 
receptions  at  the  Russian  and  other  courts,  and  be- 
lieved he  knew  very  well  what  sort  of  ordeal  we  were 
about  to  essay.  (Hope  budded  again.)  He  said 
we  were  many;  the  summer-place  was  small — a 
mere  mansion ;  doubtless  we  should  be  received  in 
summer  fashion — in  the  garden ;  we  would  stand  in 
a  row,  all  the  gentlemen  in  swallow-tail  coats,  white 
kids,  and  white  neckties,  and  the  ladies  in  light- 
colored  silks,  or  something  of  that  kind;  at  the 
proper  moment — 12  meridian — the  Emperor,  at- 
tended by  his  suite  arrayed  in  splendid  uniforms, 
would  appear  and  walk  slowly  along  the  line,  bowing 
to  some,  and  saying  two  or  three  words  to  others. 
At  the  moment  his  Majesty  appeared,  a  universal, 
delighted,  enthusiastic  smile  ought  to  break  out  like 
a  rash  among  the  passengers — a  smile  of  love,  of 
gratification,  of  admiration — and  with  one  accord, 
the  party  must  begin  to  bow — not  obsequiously, 
but  respectfully,  and  with  dignity;  at  the  end  of 
fifteen  minutes  the  Emperor  would  go  in  the  house, 
and  we  could  run  along  home  again.  We  felt  im- 
mensely relieved.  It  seemed,  in  a  manner,  easy. 
There  was  not  a  man  in  the  party  but  believed  that 
with  a  little  practice  he  could  stand  in  a  row,  espe- 
cially if  there  were  others  along ;  there  was  not  a  man 
but  believed  he  could  bow  without  tripping  on  his 
coat-tail  and  breaking  his  neck;  in  a  word,  we  came 
to  believe  we  were  equal  to  any  item  in  the  perform- 
ance except  that  complicated  smile.  The  consul 
also  said  we  ought  to  draft  a  little  address  to  the 

105 


MARK    TWAIN 

Emperor,  and  present  it  to  one  of  his  aides-de-camp, 
who  would  forward  it  to  him  at  the  proper  time. 
Therefore,  five  gentlemen  were  appointed  to  prepare 
the  document,  and  the  fifty  others  went  sadly  smil- 
ing about  the  ship — practising.  During  the  next 
twelve  hours  we  had  the  general  appearance,  some- 
how, of  being  at  a  funeral,  where  everybody  was 
sorry  the  death  had  occurred,  but  glad  it  was  over — 
where  everybody  was  smiling,  and  yet  broken- 
hearted. 

A  committee  went  ashore  to  wait  on  his  Excel- 
lency, the  Governor- General,  and  learn  our  fate 
At  the  end  of  three  hours  of  boding  suspense,  they 
came  back  and  said  the  Emperor  would  receive  us 
at  noon  the  next  day — would  send  carriages  for 
us — would  hear  the  address  in  person.  The  Grand 
Duke  Michael  had  sent  to  invite  us  to  his  palace 
also.  Any  man  could  see  that  there  was  an  inten- 
tion here  to  show  that  Russia's  friendship  for 
America  was  so  genuine  as  to  render  even  her 
private  citizens  objects  worthy  of  kindly  attentions. 

At  the  appointed  hour  we  drove  out  three  miles 
and  assembled  in  the  handsome  garden  in  front  of 
the  Emperor's  palace. 

We  formed  a  circle  under  the  trees  before  the 
door,  for  there  was  no  one  room  in  the  house  able  to 
accommodate  our  threescore  persons  comfortably, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  the  imperial  family  came  out 
bowing  and  smiling,  and  stood  in  our  midst.  A 
number  of  great  dignitaries  of  the  empire,  in  un- 
dress uniforms,  came  with  them.  With  every  bow, 
his  Majesty  said  a  word  of  welcome.     I  copy  these 

106 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

speeches.  There  is  character  in  them — Russian 
character — which  is  politeness  itself,  and  the  gen- 
uine article.  The  French  are  polite,  but  it  is  often 
mere  ceremonious  politeness.  A  Russian  imbues 
his  polite  things  with  a  heartiness,  both  of  phrase 
and  expression,  that  compels  belief  in  their  sincerity. 
As  I  was  saying,  the  Czar  punctuated  his  speeches 
with  bows: 

"Good  morning — I  am  glad  to  see  you — I  am 
gratified — I  am  delighted — I  am  happy  to  receive 
you!" 

All  took  off  their  hats,  and  the  consul  inflicted 
the  address  on  him.  He  bore  it  with  unflinching 
fortitude ;  then  took  the  rusty-looking  document  and 
handed  it  to  some  great  officer  or  other,  to  be  filed 
away  among  the  archives  of  Russia — in  the  stove. 
He  thanked  us  for  the  address,  and  said  he  was  very 
much  pleased  to  see  us,  especially  as  such  friendly 
relations  existed  between  Russia  and  the  United 
States.  The  Empress  said  the  Americans  were  fa- 
vorites in  Russia,  and  she  hoped  the  Russians  were 
similarly  regarded  in  America.  These  were  all  the 
speeches  that  were  made,  and  I  recommend  them  to 
parties  who  present  policemen  with  gold  watches,  as 
models  of  brevity  and  point.  After  this  the  Em- 
press went  and  talked  sociably  (for  an  Empress) 
with  various  ladies  around  the  circle ;  several  gentle- 
men entered  into  a  disjointed  general  conversation 
with  the  Emperor;  the  Dukes  and  Princes,  Admirals 
and  Maids  of  Honor  dropped  into  free-and-easy 
chat  with  first  one  and  then  another  of  our  party, 
and  whoever  chose  stepped  forward  and  spoke  with 

107 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  modest  little  Grand  Duchess  Marie,  the  Czar's 
daughter.  She  is  fourteen  years  old,  light-haired, 
blue-eyed,  unassuming,  and  pretty.  Everybody  talks 
English. 

The  Emperor  wore  a  cap,  frock-coat,  and  panta- 
loons, all  of  some  kind  of  plain  white  drilling — 
cotton  or  linen — and  sported  no  jewelry  or  any 
insignia  whatever  of  rank.  No  costume  could  be 
less  ostentatious.  He  is  very  tall  and  spare,  and  a 
determined-looking  man,  though  a  very  pleasant- 
looking  one,  nevertheless.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  he 
is  kind  and  affectionate.  There  is  something  very 
noble  in  his  expression  when  his  cap  is  off.  There 
is  none  of  that  cunning  in  his  eye  that  all  of  us 
noticed  in  Louis  Napoleon's. 

The  Empress  and  the  little  Grand  Duchess  wore 
simple  suits  of  foulard  (or  foulard  silk,  I  don't  know 
which  is  proper),  with  a  small  blue  spot  in  it;  the 
dresses  were  trimmed  with  blue;  both  ladies  wore 
broad  blue  sashes  about  their  waists;  linen  collars 
and  clerical  ties  of  muslin ;  low-crowned  straw  hats 
trimmed  with  blue  velvet ;  parasols  and  flesh-colored 
gloves.  The  Grand  Duchess  had  no  heels  on  her 
shoes.  I  do  not  know  this  of  my  own  knowledge, 
but  one  of  our  ladies  told  me  so.  I  was  not  looking 
at  her  shoes.  I  was  glad  to  observe  that  she  wore 
her  own  hair,  plaited  in  thick  braids  against  the  back 
of  her  head,  instead  of  the  uncomely  thing  they  call 
a  waterfall,  which  is  about  as  much  like  a  waterfall 
as  a  canvas-covered  ham  is  like  a  cataract.  Taking 
the  kind  expression  that  is  in  the  Emperor's  face 
and  the  gentleness  that  is  in  his  young  daughter's 

108 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

into  consideration,  I  wondered  if  it  would  not  tax 
the  Czar's  firmness  to  the  utmost  to  condemn  a  sup- 
plicating wretch  to  misery  in  the  wastes  of  Siberia 
if  she  pleaded  for  him.  Every  time  their  eyes  met, 
I  saw  more  and  more  what  a  tremendous  power  that 
weak,  diffident  school-girl  could  wield  if  she  chose 
to  do  it.  Many  and  many  a  time  she  might  rule  the 
Autocrat  of  Russia,  whose  lightest  word  is  law  to 
seventy  millions  of  human  beings!  She  was  only  a 
girl,  and  she  looked  like  a  thousand  others  I  have 
seen,  but  never  a  girl  provoked  such  a  novel  and 
peculiar  interest  in  me  before.  A  strange,  new 
sensation  is  a  rare  thing  in  this  humdrum  life,  and 
I  had  it  here.  There  was  nothing  stale  or  worn  out 
about  the  thoughts  and  feelings  the  situation  and 
the  circumstances  created.  It  seemed  strange — 
stranger  than  I  can  tell — to  think  that  the  central 
figure  in  the  cluster  of  men  and  women,  chatting 
here  under  the  trees  like  the  most  ordinary  individual 
in  the  land,  was  a  man  who  could  open  his  lips  and 
ships  would  fly  through  the  waves,  locomotives 
would  speed  over  the  plains,  couriers  would  hurry 
from  village  to  village,  a  hundred  telegraphs  would 
flash  the  word  to  the  four  corners  of  an  empire  that 
stretches  its  vast  proportions  over  a  seventh  part  of 
the  habitable  globe,  and  a  countless  multitude  of 
men  would  spring  to  do  his  bidding.  I  had  a  sort 
of  vague  desire  to  examine  his  hands  and  see  if  they 
were  of  flesh  and  blood,  like  other  men's.  Here 
was  a  man  who  could  do  this  wonderful  thing,  and 
yet  if  I  chose  I  could  knock  him  down.  The  case 
was  plain,  but  it  seemed  preposterous,  nevertheless 

109 


MARK    TWAIN 

— as  preposterous  as  trying  to  knock  down  a  moun- 
tain or  wipe  out  a  continent.  If  this  man  sprained 
his  ankle,  a  million  miles  of  telegraph  would  carry 
the  news  over  mountains — valleys — uninhabited 
deserts — under  the  trackless  sea — and  ten  thou- 
sand newspapers  would  prate  of  it;  if  he  were 
grievously  ill,  all  the  nations  would  know  it  before 
the  sun  rose  again;  if  he  dropped  lifeless  where  he 
stood,  his  fall  might  shake  the  thrones  of  half  a 
world!  If  I  could  have  stolen  his  coat,  I  would 
have  done  it.  When  I  meet  a  man  like  that,  I  want 
something  to  remember  him  by. 

As  a  general  thing,  we  have  been  shown  through 
palaces  by  some  plush-legged,  filigreed  flunky  or 
other,  who  charged  a  franc  for  it;  but  after  talking 
with  the  company  half  an  hour,  the  Emperor  of 
Russia  and  his  family  conducted  us  all  through  their 
mansion  themselves.  They  made  no  charge.  They 
seemed  to  take  a  real  pleasure  in  it. 

We  spent  half  an  hour  idling  through  the  palace, 
admiring  the  cozy  apartments  and  the  rich  but 
eminently  homelike  appointments  of  the  place,  and 
then  the  imperial  family  bade  our  party  a  kind 
good-by,  and  proceeded  to  count  the  spoons. 

An  invitation  was  extended  to  us  to  visit  the 
palace  of  the  eldest  son,  the  Crown  Prince  of  Russia, 
which  was  near  at  hand.  The  young  man  was 
absent,  but  the  Dukes  and  Countesses  and  Princes 
went  over  the  premises  with  us  as  leisurely  as  was 
the  case  at  the  Emperor's,  and  conversation  con- 
tinued as  lively  as  ever. 

It  was  a  little  after  one  o'clock  now.     We  drove 

no 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

to  the  Grand  Duke  Michael's,  a  mile  away,  in 
response  to  his  invitation,  previously  given. 

We  arrived  in  twenty  minutes  from  the  Emperor's. 
It  is  a  lovely  place.  The  beautiful  palace  nestles 
among  the  grand  old  groves  of  the  park,  the  park 
sits  in  the  lap  of  the  picturesque  crags  and  hills, 
and  both  look  out  upon  the  breezy  ocean.  In  the 
park  are  rustic  seats,  here  and  there,  in  secluded 
nooks  that  are  dark  with  shade;  there  are  rivulets 
of  crystal  water;  there  are  lakelets,  with  inviting, 
grassy  banks;  there  are  glimpses  of  sparkling  cas- 
cades through  openings  in  the  wilderness  of  foliage; 
there  are  streams  of  clear  water  gushing  from  mimic 
knots  on  the  trunks  of  forest  trees;  there  are 
miniature  marble  temples  perched  upon  gray  old 
crags;  there  are  airy  lookouts  whence  one  may  gaze 
upon  a  broad  expanse  of  landscape  and  ocean. 
The  palace  is  modeled  after  the  choicest  forms  of 
Grecian  architecture,  and  its  wide  colonnades  sur- 
round a  central  court  that  is  banked  with  rare 
flowers  that  fill  the  place  with  their  fragrance,  and  in 
their  midst  springs  a  fountain  that  cools  the  summer 
air,  and  may  possibly  breed  mosquitoes,  but  I  do 
not  think  it  does. 

The  Grand  Duke  and  his  Duchess  came  out,  and 
the  presentation  ceremonies  were  as  simple  as  they 
had  been  at  the  Emperor's.  In  a  few  minutes, 
conversation  was  under  way,  as  before.  The  Em- 
press appeared  in  the  veranda,  and  the  little  Grand 
Duchess  came  out  into  the  crowd.  They  had  beaten 
us  there.  In  a  few  minutes,  the  Emperor  came 
himself  on  horseback.     It  was  very  pleasant.     You 

in 


MARK    TWAIN 

can  appreciate  it  if  you  have  ever  visited  royalty 
and  felt  occasionally  that  possibly  you  might  be 
weaiing  out  your  welcome — though  as  a  general 
thing,  I  believe,  royalty  is  not  scrupulous  about 
discharging  you  when  it  is  done  with  you. 

The  Grand  Duke  is  the  third  brother  of  the  Em- 
peror, is  about  thirty-seven  years  old,  perhaps,  and 
is  the  princeliest  figure  in  Russia.  He  is  even  taller 
than  the  Czar,  as  straight  as  an  Indian,  and  bears 
himself  like  one  of  those  gorgeous  knights  we  read 
about  in  romances  of  the  Crusades.  He  looks  like 
a  great-hearted  fellow  who  wrould  pitch  an  enemy 
into  the  river  in  a  moment,  and  then  jump  in  and 
risk  his  life  fishing  him  out  again.  The  stories  they 
tell  of  him  show  him  to  be  of  a  brave  and  generous 
nature.  He  must  have  been  desirous  of  proving 
that  Americans  were  welcome  guests  in  the  imperial 
palaces  of  Russia,  because  he  rode  all  the  way  to 
Yalta  and  escorted  our  procession  to  the  Emperor's 
himself,  and  kept  his  aides  scurrying  about,  clearing 
the  road  and  offering  assistance  wherever  it  could  be 
needed.  We  were  rather  familiar  with  him  then, 
because  we  did  not  know  who  he  was.  We  recog- 
nized him  now,  and  appreciated  the  friendly  spirit 
that  prompted  him  to  do  us  a  favor  that  any  other 
Grand  Duke  in  the  world  would  have  doubtless  de- 
clined to  do.  He  had  plenty  of  servitors  whom  he 
could  have  sent,  but  he  chose  to  attend  to  the  matter 
himself. 

The  Grand  Duke  was  dressed  in  the  handsome  and 
showy  uniform  of  a  Cossack  officer.  The  Grand 
Duchess  had  on  a  white  alpaca  robe,  with  the  seams 

112 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  gores  trimmed  with  black  barb  lace,  and  a  little 
gray  hat  with  a  feather  of  the  same  color.  She  is 
young,  rather  pretty,  modest  and  unpretending,  and 
full  of  winning  politeness. 

Our  party  walked  all  through  the  house,  and  then 
the  nobility  escorted  them  all  over  the  grounds,  and 
finally  brought  them  back  to  the  palace  about  half 
past  two  o'clock  to  breakfast.  They  called  it  break- 
fast, but  we  would  have  called  it  luncheon.  It  con- 
sisted of  two  kinds  of  wine;  tea,  bread,  cheese,  and 
cold  meats,  and  was  served  on  the  center-tables  in 
the  reception-room  and  the  verandas — anywhere 
that  was  convenient;  there  was  no  ceremony.  It 
was  a  sort  of  picnic.  I  had  heard  before  that  we 
were  to  breakfast  there,  but  Blucher  said  he  believed 
Baker's  boy  had  suggested  it  to  his  Imperial  High- 
ness. I  think  not — though  it  would  be  like  him. 
Baker's  boy  is  the  famine-breeder  of  the  ship.  He 
is  always  hungry.  They  say  he  goes  about  the 
staterooms  when  the  passengers  are  out,  and  eats  up 
all  the  soap.  And  they  say  he  eats  oakum.  They 
say  he  will  eat  anything  he  can  get  between  meals, 
but  he  prefers  oakum.  He  does  not  like  oakum  for 
dinner,  but  he  likes  it  for  a  lunch,  at  odd  hours,  or 
anything  that  way.  It  makes  him  very  disagreeable, 
because  it  makes  his  breath  bad,  and  keeps  his  teeth 
all  stuck  up  with  tar.  Baker's  boy  may  have  sug- 
gested the  breakfast,  but  I  hope  he  did  not.  It 
went  off  well,  anyhow.  The  illustrious  host  moved 
about  from  place  to  place,  and  helped  to  destroy  the 
provisions  and  keep  the  conversation  lively,  and  the 
Grand  Duchess  talked  with  the  veranda  parties  and 


MARK    TWAIN 

such  as  had  satisfied  their  appetites  and  straggled 
out  from  the  reception-room. 

The  Grand  Duke's  tea  was  delicious.  They  give 
one  a  lemon  to  squeeze  into  it,  or  iced  milk,  if  he 
prefers  it.  The  former  is  best.  This  tea  is  brought 
overland  from  China.  It  injures  the  article  to 
transport  it  by  sea. 

When  it  was  time  to  go,  we  bade  our  distinguished 
hosts  good-by,  and  they  retired  happy  and  con- 
tented to  their  apartments  to  count  their  spoons. 

We  had  spent  the  best  part  of  half  a  day  in  the 
home  of  royalty,  and  had  been  as  cheerful  and  com- 
fortable all  the  time  as  we  could  have  been  in  the 
ship.  I  would  as  soon  have  thought  of  being  cheer- 
ful in  Abraham's  bosom  as  in  the  palace  of  an 
Emperor.  I  supposed  that  Emperors  were  terrible 
people.  I  thought  they  never  did  anything  but  wear 
magnificent  crowns  and  red  velvet  dressing-gowns 
with  dabs  of  wool  sewed  on  them  in  spots,  and  sit 
on  thrones  and  scowl  at  the  flunkies  and  the  people 
in  the  parquette,  and  order  Dukes  and  Duchesses 
off  to  execution.  I  find,  however,  that  when  one  is 
so  fortunate  as  to  get  behind  the  scenes  and  see  them 
at  home  and  in  the  privacy  of  their  firesides,  they 
are  strangely  like  common  mortals.  They  are 
pleasant er  to  look  upon  then  than  they  are  in  their 
theatrical  aspect.  It  seems  to  come  as  natural  to 
them  to  dress  and  act  like  other  people  as  it  is  to 
put  a  friend's  cedar  pencil  in  your  pocket  when  you 
are  done  using  it.  But  I  can  never  have  any  con- 
fidence in  the  tinsel  kings  of  the  theater  after  this. 
It  will  be  a  great  loss.     I  used  to  take  such  a  thrilling 

114 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

pleasure  in  them.  But,  hereafter,  I  will  turn  me 
sadly  away  and  say: 

"This  does  not  answer — this  isn't  the  style  of 
king  that  I  am  acquainted  with." 

When  they  swagger  around  the  stage  in  jeweled 
crowns  and  splendid  robes,  I  shall  feel  bound  to  ob- 
serve that  all  the  Emperors  that  ever  I  was  personally 
acquainted  with  wore  the  commonest  sort  of  clothes, 
and  did  not  swagger.  And  when  they  come  on  the 
stage  attended  by  a  vast  body-guard  of  supes  in 
helmets  and  tin  breastplates,  it  will  be  my  duty  as 
well  as  my  pleasure  to  inform  the  ignorant  that  no 
crowned  head  of  my  acquaintance  has  a  soldier  any- 
where about  his  house  or  his  person. 

Possibly  it  may  be  thought  that  our  party  tarried 
too  long,  or  did  other  improper  things,  but  such  was 
not  the  case.  The  company  felt  that  the}'  were 
occupying  an  unusually  responsible  position — they 
were  representing  the  people  of  America,  not  the 
government — and  therefore  they  were  careful  to  do 
their  best  to  perform  their  high  mission  with  credit 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Imperial  families,  no 
doubt,  considered  that  in  entertaining  us  they  were 
more  especially  entertaining  the  people  of  America 
than  they  could  by  showering  attentions  on  a  whole 
platoon  of  ministers  plenipotentiary;  and  therefore 
they  gave  to  the  event  its  fullest  significance,  as  an 
expression  of  good  will  and  friendly  feeling  toward 
the  entire  country.  We  took  the  kindnesses  we 
received  as  attentions  thus  directed,  of  course,  and 
not  to  ourselves  as  a  party.  That  we  felt  a  personal 
pride  in  being  received  as  the  representatives  of  a 

US 


MARK    TWAIN 

nation,  we  do  not  deny ;  that  we  felt  a  national  pride 
in  the  warm  cordiality  of  that  reception,  cannot  be 
doubted. 

Our  poet  has  been  rigidly  suppressed,  from  the 
time  we  let  go  the  anchor.  When  it  was  announced 
that  we  were  going  to  visit  the  Emperor  of  Russia, 
the  fountains  of  his  great  deep  were  broken  up,  and 
he  rained  ineffable  bosh  for  four-and-twenty  hours. 
Our  original  anxiety  as  to  what  we  were  going  to 
do  with  ourselves,  was  suddenly  transformed  into 
anxiety  about  what  we  were  going  to  do  with  our 
poet.  The  problem  was  solved  at  last.  Two  alter- 
natives were  offered  him — he  must  either  swear  a 
dreadful  oath  that  he  would  not  issue  a  line  of  his 
poetry  while  he  was  in  the  Czar's  dominions,  or  else 
remain  under  guard  on  board  the  ship  until  we  were 
safe  at  Constantinople  again.  He  fought  the  di- 
lemma long,  but  yielded  at  last.  It  was  a  great 
deliverance.  Perhaps  the  savage  reader  would  like 
a  specimen  of  his  style.  I  do  not  mean  this  term  to 
be  offensive.  I  only  use  it  because  "the  gentle 
reader"  has  been  used  so  often  that  any  change 
from  it  cannot  but  be  refreshing: 

Save  us  and  sanctify  us,  and  finally,  then, 
See  good  provisions  we  enjoy  while  we  journey 

to  Jerusalem. 
For  so  man  proposes,  which  it  is  most  true, 
And  time  will  wait  for  none,  nor  for  us  too. 

The  sea  has  been  unusually  rough  all  day.  How- 
ever, we  have  had  a  lively  time  of  it,  anyhow.  We 
have  had  quite  a  run  of  visitors.  The  Governor- 
General  came,  and  we  received  him  with  a  salute  of 

116 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

nine  guns.  He  brought  his  family  with  him.  I 
observed  that  carpets  were  spread  from  the  pier- 
head to  his  carriage  for  him  to  walk  on,  though  I 
have  seen  him  walk  there  without  any  carpet  when 
he  was  not  on  business.  I  thought  maybe  he  had 
what  the  accidental  insurance  people  might  call  an 
extra-hazardous  polish  ("policy" — joke,  but  not 
above  mediocrity)  on  his  boots,  and  wished  to  pro- 
tect them,  but  I  examined  and  could  not  see  that 
they  were  blacked  any  better  than  usual.  It  may 
have  been  that  he  had  forgotten  his  carpet  before, 
but  he  did  not  have  it  with  him,  anyhow.  He  was 
an  exceedingly  pleasant  old  gentleman;  we  all  liked 
him,  especially  Blucher.  When  he  went  away,  Blucher 
invited  him  to  come  again  and  fetch  his  carpet  along. 

Prince  Dolgorouki  and  a  Grand  Admiral  or  two, 
whom  we  had  seen  yesterday  at  the  reception,  came 
on  board  also.  I  was  a  little  distant  with  these 
parties,  at  first,  because  when  I  have  been  visiting 
Emperors  I  do  not  like  to  be  too  familiar  with  people 
I  only  know  by  reputation,  and  whose  moral  charac- 
ters and  standing  in  society  I  cannot  be  thoroughly 
acquainted  with.  I  judged  it  best  to  be  a  little 
offish,  at  first.  I  said  to  myself,  Princes  and  Counts 
and  Grand  Admirals  are  very  well,  but  they  are  not 
Emperors,  and  one  cannot  be  too  particular  about 
whom  he  associates  with. 

Baron  Wrangel  came,  also.  He  used  to  be  a  Rus- 
sian Ambassador  at  Washington.  I  told  him  I  had 
an  uncle  who  fell  down  a  shaft  and  broke  himself  in 
two,  as  much  as  a  year  before  that.  That  was  a 
falsehood,  but  then  I  was  not  going  to  let  any  man 

117 


MARK    TWAIN 

eclipse  me  on  surprising  adventures,  merely  for  the 
want  of  a  little  invention.  The  Baron  is  a  fine  man, 
and  is  said  to  stand  high  in  the  Emperor's  confidence 
and  esteem. 

Baron  Ungern-Sternberg,  a  boisterous,  whole- 
souled  old  nobleman,  came  with  the  rest.  He  is 
a  man  of  progress  and  enterprise — a  representative 
man  of  the  age.  He  is  the  Chief  Director  of  the 
railway  system  of  Russia — a  sort  of  railroad  king. 
In  his  line  he  is  making  things  move  along  in  this 
country.  He  has  traveled  extensively  in  America. 
He  says  he  has  tried  convict  labor  on  his  railroads, 
and  with  perfect  success.  He  says  the  convicts 
work  well,  and  are  quiet  and  peaceable.  He  ob- 
served that  he  employs  nearly  ten  thousand  of  them 
now.  This  appeared  to  be  another  call  on  my 
resources.  I  was  equal  to  the  emergency.  I  said 
we  had  eighty  thousand  convicts  employed  on  the 
railways  in  America — all  of  them  under  sentence  of 
death  for  murder  in  the  first  degree.  That  closed 
him  out.  We  had  General  Todleben  (the  famous 
defender  of  Sebastopol,  during  the  siege),  and  many 
inferior  army  and  also  navy  officers,  and  a  number 
of  unofficial  Russian  ladies  and  gentlemen.  Natu- 
rally, a  champagne  luncheon  was  in  order,  and  was 
accomplished  without  loss  of  life.  Toasts  and  jokes 
were  discharged  freely,  but  no  speeches  were  made 
save  one  thanking  the  Emperor  and  the  Grand  Duke, 
through  the  Governor-General,  for  our  hospitable 
reception,  and  one  by  the  Governor-General  in  reply, 
in  which  he  returned  the  Emperor's  thanks  for  the 
speech,  etc. 

118 


CHAPTER  XI 

WE  returned  to  Constantinople,  and  after  a  day 
or  two  spent  in  exhausting  marches  about  the 
city  and  voyages  up  the  Golden  Horn  in  caiques,  we 
steamed  away  again.  We  passed  through  the  Sea  of 
Marmora  and  the  Dardanelles,  and  steered  for  a  new 
land — a  new  one  to  us,  at  least — Asia.  We  had 
as  yet  only  acquired  a  bowing  acquaintance  with  it, 
through  pleasure  excursions  to  Scutari  and  the 
regions  round  about. 

We  passed  between  Lemnos  and  Mytilene,  and 
saw  them  as  we  had  seen  Elba  and  the  Balearic  Isles 
— mere  bulky  shapes,  with  the  softening  mists  of 
distance  upon  them — whales  in  a  fog,  as  it  were. 
Then  we  held  our  course  southward,  and  began  to 
"read  up"  celebrated  Smyrna. 

At  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night  the  sailors  in  the 
forecastle  amused  themselves  and  aggravated  us  by 
burlesquing  our  visit  to  royalty.  The  opening  para- 
graph of  our  Address  to  the  Emperor  was  framed  as 
follows : 

"We  are  a  handful  of  private  citizens  of  America, 
traveling  simply  for  recreation — and  unostentatious- 
ly, as  becomes  our  unofficial  state — and,  therefore, 
we  have  no  excuse  to  tender  for  presenting  ourselves 
before  your  Majesty,  save  the  desire  of  offering  our 

119 


MARK    TWAIN 

grateful  acknowledgments  to  the  lord  of  a  realm 
which,  through  good  and  through  evil  report,  has 
been  the  steadfast  friend  of  the  land  we  love  so 
well." 

The  third  cook,  crowned  with  a  resplendent  tin 
basin  and  wrapped  royally  in  a  table-cloth  mottled 
with  grease-spots  and  coffee-stains,  and  bearing  a 
scepter  that  looked  strangely  like  a  belaying  pin, 
walked  upon  a  dilapidated  carpet  and  perched  him- 
self on  the  capstan,  careless  of  the  flying  spray;  his 
tarred  and  weather-beaten  Chamberlains,  Dukes,  and 
Lord  High  Admirals  surrounded  him,  arrayed  in  all 
the  pomp  that  spare  tarpaulins  and  remnants  of  old 
sails  could  furnish.  Then  the  visiting  "watch  be- 
low," transformed  into  graceless  ladies  and  uncouth 
pilgrims,  by  rude  travesties  upon  waterfalls,  hoop- 
skirts,  white  kid  gloves,  and  swallow-tail  coats,  moved 
solemnly  up  the  companionway,  and  bowing  low, 
began  a  system  of  complicated  and  extraordinary 
smiling  which  few  monarchs  could  look  upon  and 
live.  Then  the  mock  consul,  a  slush-plastered  deck- 
sweep,  drew  out  a  soiled  fragment  of  paper  and  pro- 
ceeded to  read,  laboriously : 

"To  his  Imperial  Majesty,  Alexander  II.,  Em- 
peror of  Russia: 

"We  are  a  handful  of  private  citizens  of  America, 
traveling  simply  for  recreation — and  unostentatious- 
ly, as  becomes  our  unofficial  state — and,  therefore, 
we  have  no  excuse  to  tender  for  presenting  ourselves 
before  your  Majesty — " 

The  Emperor — "Then  what  the  devil  did  you 
come  for?" 

J20 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

— "Save  the  desire  of  offering  our  grateful  ac- 
knowledgments to  the  lord  of  a  realm  which — " 

The  Emperor — "Oh,  d — n  the  Address! — read 
it  to  the  police.  Chamberlain,  take  these  people 
over  to  my  brother,  the  Grand  Duke's,  and  give 
them  a  square  meal.  Adieu!  I  am  happy — I  am 
gratified — I  am  delighted — I  am  bored.  Adieu, 
adieu — vamose  the  ranch!  The  First  Groom  of  the 
Palace  will  proceed  to  count  the  portable  articles  of 
value  belonging  to  the  premises." 

The  farce  then  closed,  to  be  repeated  again  with 
every  change  of  the  watches,  and  embellished  with 
new  and  still  more  extravagant  inventions  of  pomp 
and  conversation. 

At  all  times  of  the  day  and  night  the  phraseology 
of  that  tiresome  address  fell  upon  our  ears.  Grimy 
sailors  came  down  out  of  the  foretop  placidly  an- 
nouncing themselves  as  "a  handful  of  private  citi- 
zens of  America,  traveling  simply  for  recreation  and 
unostentatiously,"  etc.;  the  coal-passers  moved  to 
their  duties  in  the  profound  depths  of  the  ship,  ex- 
plaining the  blackness  of  their  faces  and  their  un- 
couthness  of  dress,  with  the  reminder  that  they  were 
"a  handful  of  private  citizens,  traveling  simply  for 
recreation,"  etc.,  and  when  the  cry  rang  through 
the  vessel  at  midnight:  "Eight  bells! — larboard 
watch,  turn  out!"  the  larboard  watch  came  gap- 
ing and  stretching  out  of  their  den,  with  the  ever- 
lasting formula:  "Aye,  aye,  sir!  We  are  a  handful 
of  private  citizens  of  America,  traveling  simply  for 
recreation,  and  unostentatiously,  as  becomes  our  un- 
official state!" 

121 


MARK    TWAIN 

As  I  was  a  member  of  the  committee,  and  helped 
to  frame  the  Address,  these  sarcasms  came  home  to 
me.  I  never  heard  a  sailor  proclaiming  himself  as  a 
handful  of  American  citizens  traveling  for  recreation, 
but  I  wished  he  might  trip  and  fall  overboard,  and 
so  reduce  his  handful  by  one  individual,  at  least.  I 
never  was  so  tired  of  any  one  phrase  as  the  sailors 
made  me  of  the  opening  sentence  of  the  Address  to 
the  Emperor  of  Russia. 

This  seaport  of  Smyrna,  our  first  notable  acquaint- 
ance in  Asia,  is  a  closely  packed  city  of  one  hundred 
and  thirty  thousand  inhabitants,  and,  like  Constan- 
tinople, it  has  no  outskirts.  It  is  as  closely  packed  at 
its  outer  edges  as  it  is  in  the  center,  and  then  the 
habitations  leave  suddenly  off  and  the  plain  beyond 
seems  houseless.  It  is  just  like  any  other  Oriental 
city.  That  is  to  say,  its  Moslem  houses  are  heavy 
and  dark,  and  as  comfortless  as  so  many  tombs;  its 
streets  are  crooked,  rudely  and  roughly  paved,  and 
as  narrow  as  an  ordinary  staircase;  the  streets  uni- 
formly carry  a  man  to  any  other  place  than  the  one 
he  wants  to  go  to,  and  surprise  him  by  landing  him 
in  the  most  unexpected  localities;  business  is  chiefly 
carried  on  in  great  covered  bazars,  celled  like  a 
honeycomb  with  innumerable  shops  no  larger  than 
a  common  closet,  and  the  whole  hive  cut  up  into  a 
maze  of  alleys  about  wide  enough  to  accommodate 
a  laden  camel,  and  well  calculated  to  confuse  a 
stranger  and  eventually  lose  him ;  everywhere  there  is 
dirt,  everywhere  there  are  fleas,  everywhere  there  are 
lean,  broken-hearted  dogs;  every  alley  is  thronged 
with  people;    wherever  you  look,   your  eye  rest; 

122 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

upon  a  wild  masquerade  of  extravagant  costumes; 
the  workshops  are  all  open  to  the  streets,  and  the 
workmen  visible;  all  manner  of  sounds  assail  the 
ear,  and  over  them  all  rings  out  the  muezzin's  cry 
from  some  tall  minaret,  calling  the  faithful  vaga- 
bonds to  prayer;  and  superior  to  the  call  to  prayer, 
the  noises  in  the  streets,  the  interest  of  the  costumes 
— superior  to  everything,  and  claiming  the  bulk  of 
attention  first,  last,  and  all  the  time — is  a  combina- 
tion of  Mohammedan  stenches,  to  which  the  smell  of 
even  a  Chinese  quarter  would  be  as  pleasant  as  the 
roasting  odors  of  the  fatted  calf  to  the  nostrils  of  the 
returning  Prodigal.  Such  is  Oriental  luxury — such 
is  Oriental  splendor !  We  read  about  it  all  our  days, 
but  we  comprehend  it  not  until  we  see  it.  Smyrna 
is  a  very  old  city.  Its  name  occurs  several  times  in 
the  Bible,  one  or  two  of  the  disciples  of  Christ  visited 
it,  and  here  was  located  one  of  the  original  seven 
apocalyptic  churches  spoken  of  in  Revelations. 
These  churches  were  symbolized  in  the  Scriptures 
as  candlesticks,  and  on  certain  conditions  there  was  a 
sort  of  implied  promise  that  Smyrna  should  be  en- 
dowed with  a  "crown  of  life."  She  was  to  "be 
faithful  unto  death" — those  were  the  terms.  She 
has  not  kept  up  her  faith  straight  along,  but  the 
pilgrims  that  wander  hither  consider  that  she  has 
come  near  enough  to  it  to  save  her,  and  so  they  point 
to  the  fact  that  Smyrna  to-day  wears  her  crown  of 
life,  and  is  a  great  city,  with  a  great  commerce  and 
full  of  energy,  while  the  cities  wherein  were  located 
the  other  six  churches,  and  to  which  no  crown  of  life 
was  promised,  have  vanished  from  the  earth.     So 

123 


MARK    TWAIN 

Smyrna  really  still  possesses  her  crown  of  life,  in 
a  business  point  of  view.  Her  career,  for  eighteen 
centuries,  has  been  a  chequered  one,  and  she  has 
been  under  the  rule  of  princes  of  many  creeds,  yet 
there  has  been  no  season  during  all  that  time,  as  far 
as  we  know  (and  during  such  seasons  as  she  was 
inhabited  at  all) ,  that  she  has  been  without  her  little 
community  of  Christians  "faithful  unto  death." 
Hers  was  the  only  church  against  which  no  threats 
were  implied  in  the  Revelation,  and  the  only  one 
which  survived. 

With  Ephesus,  forty  miles  from  here,  where  was 
located  another  of  the  seven  churches,  the  case  was 
different.  The  "candlestick"  has  been  removed 
from  Ephesus.  Her  light  has  been  put  out.  Pil- 
grims, always  prone  to  find  prophecies  in  the  Bible, 
and  often  where  none  exist,  speak  cheerfully  and 
complacently  of  poor  ruined  Ephesus  as  the  victim 
of  prophecy.  And  yet  there  is  no  sentence  that 
promises,  without  due  qualification,  the  destruction 
of  the  city.     The  words  are: 

Remember,  therefore,  from  whence  thou  art  fallen,  and 
repent,  and  do  the  first  works;  or  else  I  will  come  unto  thee 
quickly,  and  will  remove  thy  candlestick  out  of  his  place, 
except  thou  repent. 

That  is  all ;  the  other  verses  are  singularly  compli- 
mentary to  Ephesus.  The  threat  is  qualified.  There 
is  no  history  to  show  that  she  did  not  repent.  But 
the  crudest  habit  the  modern  prophecy-savans  have 
is  that  one  of  coolly  and  arbitrarily  fitting  the 
prophetic  shirt  on  to  the  wrong  man.  They  do  it 
without  regard  to  rhyme  or  reason.     Both  the  cases 

124 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

I  have  just  mentioned  are  instances  in  point.  Those 
''prophecies"  are  distinctly  leveled  at  the  "churches 
of  Ephesus,  Smyrna,"  etc.,  and  yet  the  pilgrims 
invariably  make  them  refer  to  the  cities  instead.  No 
crown  of  life  is  promised  to  the  town  of  Smyrna  and 
its  commerce,  but  to  the  handful  of  Christians  who 
formed  its  "church."  If  they  were  "faithful  unto 
death,"  they  have  their  crown  now — but  no  amount 
of  faithfulness  and  legal  shrewdness  combined  could 
legitimately  drag  the  city  into  a  participation  in  the 
promises  of  the  prophecy.  The  stately  language  of 
the  Bible  refers  to  a  crown  of  life  whose  luster  will 
reflect  the  day-beams  of  the  endless  ages  of  eternity, 
not  the  butterfly  existence  of  a  city  built  by  men's 
hands,  whfch  must  pass  to  dust  with  the  builders 
and  be  forgotten  even  in  the  mere  handful  of  cen- 
turies vouchsafed  to  the  solid  world  itself  between 
its  cradle  and  its  grave. 

The  fashion  of  delving  out  fulfilments  of  prophecy 
where  that  prophecy  consists  of  mere  "ifs,"  trenches 
upon  the  absurd.  Suppose,  a  thousand  years  from 
now,  a  malarious  swamp  builds  itself  up  in  the 
shallow  harbor  of  Smyrna,  or  something  else  kills 
the  town;  and  suppose,  also,  that  within  that  time 
the  swamp  that  has  filled  the  renowned  harbor  of 
Ephesus  and  rendered  her  ancient  site  deadly  and 
uninhabitable  to-day,  becomes  hard  and  healthy 
ground;  suppose  the  natural  consequence  ensues,  to 
wit:  that  Smyrna  becomes  a  melancholy  ruin,  and 
Ephesus  is  rebuilt.  What  would  the  prophecy- 
savans  say?  They  would  coolly  skip  over  our  age 
of  the  world,  and  say:    "Smyrna  was  not  faithful 

125 


MARK    TWAIN 

unto  death j  and  so  her  crown  of  life  was  denied  her; 
Ephesus  repented,  and  lo!  her  candlestick  was  not 
removed.  Behold  these  evidences!  How  wonder- 
ful is  prophecy!" 

Smyrna  has  been  utterly  destroyed  six  times.  If 
her  crown  of  life  had  been  an  insurance  policy,  she 
would  have  had  an  opportunity  to  collect  on  it  the 
first  time  she  fell.  But  she  holds  it  on  sufferance 
and  by  a  complimentary  construction  of  language 
which  does  not  refer  to  her.  Six  different  times, 
however,  I  suppose  some  infatuated  prophecy- 
enthusiast  blundered  along  and  said,  to  the  infinite 
disgust  of  Smyrna  and  the  Smyrniotes:  "In  sooth, 
here  is  astounding  fulfilment  of  prophecy!  Smyrna 
hath  not  been  faithful  unto  death,  and  behold  her 
crown  of  life  is  vanished  from  her  head.  Verily, 
these  things  be  astonishing!" 

Such  things  have  a  bad  influence.  They  provoke 
worldly  men  into  using  light  conversation  concerning 
sacred  subjects.  Thick-headed  commentators  upon 
the  Bible,  and  stupid  preachers  and  teachers,  work 
more  damage  to  religion  than  sensible,  cool-brained 
clergymen  can  fight  away  again,  toil  as  they  may. 
It  is  not  good  judgment  to  fit  a  crown  of  life  upon  a 
city  which  has  been  destroyed  six  times.  That  other 
class  of  wiseacres  who  twist  prophecy  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  make  it  promise  the  destruction  and 
desolation  of  the  same  city,  use  judgment  just  as 
bad,  since  the  city  is  in  a  very  flourishing  condition 
now,  unhappily  for  them.  These  things  put  argu- 
ments into  the  mouth  of  infidelity. 

A  portion  of  the  city  is  pretty  exclusively  Turk- 
ic 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ish;  the  Jews  have  a  quarter  to  themselves;  the 
Franks  another  quarter;  so,  also,  with  the  Armeni- 
ans. The  Armenians,  of  course,  are  Christians. 
Their  houses  are  large,  clean,  airy,  handsomely 
paved  with  black  and  white  squares  of  marble,  and 
in  the  center  of  many  of  them  is  a  square  court, 
which  has  in  it  a  luxuriant  flower-garden  and  a 
sparkling  fountain;  the  doors  of  all  the  rooms  open 
on  this.  A  very  wide  hall  leads  to  the  street-door, 
and  in  this  the  women  sit,  the  most  of  the  day.  In 
the  cool  of  the  evening  they  dress  up  in  their  best 
raiment  and  show  themselves  at  the  door.  They  are 
all  comely  of  countenance,  and  exceedingly  neat  and 
cleanly;  they  look  as  if  they  were  just  out  of  a  band- 
box. Some  of  the  young  ladies — many  of  them,  I 
may  say — are  even  very  beautiful;  they  average  a 
shade  better  than  American  girls — which  treasonable 
words  I  pray  may  be  forgiven  me.  They  are  very 
sociable,  and  will  smile  back  when  a  stranger  smiles 
at  them,  bow  back  when  he  bows,  and  talk  back  if 
he  speaks  to  them.  No  introduction  is  required. 
An  hour's  chat  at  the  door  with  a  pretty  girl  one 
never  saw  before,  is  easily  obtained,  and  is  very 
pleasant.  I  have  tried  it.  I  could  not  talk  anything 
but  English,  and  the  girl  knew  nothing  but  Greek, 
or  Armenian,  or  some  such  barbarous  tongue,  but 
we  got  along  very  well.  I  find  that  in  cases  like 
these,  the  fact  that  you  cannot  comprehend  each 
other  isn't  much  of  a  drawback.  In  that  Russian 
town  of  Yalta  I  danced  an  astonishing  sort  of  dance 
an  hour  long,  and  one  I  had  not  heard  of  before, 
with  a  very  pretty  girl,  and  we  talked  incessantly, 

127 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  laughed  exhaustingly,  and  neither  one  ever 
knew  what  the  other  was  driving  at.  But  it  was 
splendid.  There  were  twenty  people  in  the  set,  and 
the  dance  was  very  lively  and  complicated.  It  was 
complicated  enough  without  me — with  me  it  was 
more  so.  I  threw  in  a  figure  now  and  then  that 
surprised  those  Russians.  But  I  have  never  ceased 
to  think  of  that  girl.  I  have  written  to  her,  but  I 
cannot  direct  the  epistle  because  her  name  is  one  of 
those  nine- jointed  Russian  affairs,  and  there  are  not 
letters  enough  in  our  alphabet  to  hold  out.  I  am 
not  reckless  enough  to  try  to  pronounce  it  when  I 
am  awake,  but  I  make  a  stagger  at  it  in  my  dreams, 
and  get  up  with  the  lockjaw  in  the  morning.  I  am 
fading.  I  do  not  take  my  meals  now,  with  any  sort 
of  regularity.  Her  dear  name  haunts  me  still  in  my 
dreams.  It  is  awful  on  teeth.  It  never  comes  out 
of  my  mouth  but  it  fetches  an  old  snag  along  with 
it.  And  then  the  lockjaw  closes  down  and  nips  off 
a  couple  of  the  last  syllables — but  they  taste  good. 
Coming  through  the  Dardanelles,  we  saw  camel- 
trains  on  shore  with  the  glasses,  but  we  were  never 
close  to  one  till  we  got  to  Smyrna.  These  camels 
are  very  much  larger  than  the  scrawny  specimens 
one  sees  in  the  menagerie.  They  stride  along  these 
streets,  in  single  file,  a  dozen  in  a  train,  with  heavy 
loads  on  their  backs,  and  a  fancy-looking  negro  in 
Turkish  costume,  or  an  Arab,  preceding  them  on  a 
little  donkey  and  completely  overshadowed  and 
rendered  insignificant  by  the  huge  beasts.  To  see  a 
camel -train  laden  with  the  spices  of  Arabia  and  the 
rare  fabrics  of  Persia  come  marching  through  the 

128 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

narrow  alleys  of  the  bazar,  among  porters  with 
their  burdens,  money-changers,  lamp-merchants, 
Alnaschars  in  the  glassware  business,  portly  cross- 
legged  Turks  smoking  the  famous  narghili,  and  the 
crowds  drifting  to  and  fro  in  the  fanciful  costumes 
of  the  East,  is  a  genuine  revelation  of  the  Orient. 
The  picture  lacks  nothing.  It  casts  you  back  at 
once  in  your  forgotten  boyhood,  and  again  you 
dream  over  the  wonders  of  the  Arabian  Nights; 
again  your  companions  are  princes,  your  lord  is  the 
Caliph  Haroun  Al  Raschid,  and  your  servants  are 
terrific  giants  and  genii  that  come  with  smoke  and 
lightning  and  thunder,  and  go  as  a  storm  goes  when 
they  depart! 


CHAPTER  XII 

WE  inquired  and  learned  that  the  lions  of 
Smyrna  consisted  of  the  ruins  of  the  ancient 
citadel,  whose  broken  and  prodigious  battlements 
frown  upon  the  city  from  a  lofty  hill  just  in  the  edge 
of  the  town  —  the  Mount  Pagus  of  Scripture,  they 
call  it ;  the  site  of  that  one  of  the  seven  apocalyptic 
churches  of  Asia  which  was  located  here  in  the  first 
century  of  the  Christian  era;  and  the  grave  and  the 
place  of  martyrdom  of  the  venerable  Polycarp,  who 
suffered  in  Smyrna  for  his  religion  some  eighteen 
hundred  years  ago. 

We  took  little  donkeys  and  started.  We  saw 
Poly  carp's  tomb,  and  then  hurried  on. 

The  "Seven  Churches" — thus  they  abbreviate 
it — came  next  on  the  list.  We  rode  there — about 
a  mile  and  a  half  in  the  sweltering  sun — and  visited 
a  little  Greek  church  which  they  said  was  built  upon 
the  ancient  site;  and  we  paid  a  small  fee,  and  the 
holy  attendant  gave  each  of  us  a  little  wax  candle  as 
a  remembrance  of  the  place,  and  I  put  mine  in  my 
hat  and  the  sun  melted  it  and  the  grease  all  ran 
down  the  back  of  my  neck;  and  so  now  I  have  not 
anything  left  but  the  wick,  and  it  is  a  sorry  and 
wilted-looking  wick  at  that. 

Several  of  us  argued  as  well  as  we  could  that  the 

130 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

"church"  mentioned  in  the  Bible  meant  a  party  of 
Christians,  and  not  a  building;  that  the  Bible  spoke 
of  them  as  being  very  poor — so  poor,  I  thought, 
and  so  subject  to  persecution  (as  per  Polycarp's 
martyrdom)  that  in  the  first  place  they  probably 
could  not  have  afforded  a  church  edifice,  and  in  the 
second  would  not  have  dared  to  build  it  in  the  open 
light  of  day  if  they  could;  and  finally,  that  if  they 
had  had  the  privilege  of  building  it,  common  judg- 
ment would  have  suggested  that  they  build  it  some- 
where near  the  town.  But  the  elders  of  the  ship's 
family  ruled  us  down  and  scouted  our  evidences. 
However,  retribution  came  to  them  afterward.  They 
found  that  they  had  been  led  astray  and  had  gone  to 
the  wrong  place ;  they  discovered  that  the  accepted 
site  is  in  the  city. 

Riding  through  the  town,  we  could  see  marks  of 
the  six  Smyrnas  that  have  existed  here  and  been 
burned  up  by  fire  or  knocked  down  by  earthquakes. 
The  hills  and  the  rocks  are  rent  asunder  in  places, 
excavations  expose  great  blocks  of  building-stone 
that  have  lain  buried  for  ages,  and  all  the  mean 
houses  and  walls  of  modern  Smyrna  along  the  way 
are  spotted  white  with  broken  pillars,  capitals,  and 
fragments  of  sculptured  marble  that  once  adorned 
the  lordly  palaces  that  were  the  glory  of  the  city  in 
the  olden  time. 

The  ascent  of  the  hill  of  the  citadel  is  very  steep, 
and  we  proceeded  rather  slowly.  But  there  were 
matters  of  interest  about  us.  In  one  place,  five 
hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  the  perpendicular  bank 
on  the  upper  side  of  the  road  was  ten  or  fifteen  feet 

131 


MARK    TWAIN 

high,  and  the  cut  exposed  three  veins  of  oyster- 
shells,  just  as  we  have  seen  quartz  veins  exposed  in 
the  cutting  of  a  road  in  Nevada  or  Montana.  The 
veins  were  about  eighteen  inches  thick  and  two  or 
three  feet  apart,  and  they  slanted  along  downward 
for  a  distance  of  thirty  feet  or  more,  and  then  dis- 
appeared where  the  cut  joined  the  road.  Heaven 
only  knows  how  far  a  man  might  trace  them  by 
"stripping."  They  were  clean,  nice  oyster-shells, 
large,  and  just  like  any  other  oyster-shells.  They 
were  thickly  massed  together,  and  none  were  scat- 
tered above  or  below  the  veins.  Each  one  was  a 
well-defined  lead  by  itself,  and  without  a  spur.  My 
first  instinct  was  to  set  up  the  usual — 

NOTICE 

We,  the  undersigned,  claim  five  claims  of  two  hundred  feet 
each  (and  one  for  discovery)  on  this  ledge  or  lode  of  oyster- 
shells,  with  all  its  dips,  spurs,  angles,  variations,  and  sinuosities, 
and  fifty  feet  on  each  side  of  the  same,  to  work  it,  etc.,  etc., 
according  to  the  mining  laws  of  Smyrna. 

They  were  such  perfectly  natural-looking  leads 
that  I  could  hardly  keep  from  "taking  them  up." 
Among  the  oyster-shells  were  mixed  many  fragments 
of  ancient,  broken  crockeryware.  Now  how  did 
those  masses  of  oyster-shells  get  there?  I  cannot 
determine.  Broken  crockery  and  oyster-shells  are 
suggestive  of  restaurants — but  then  they  could  have 
had  no  such  places  away  up  there  on  that  mountain- 
side in  our  time,  because  nobody  has  lived  up  there. 
A  restaurant  would  not  pay  in  such  a  stony,  forbid- 
ding, desolate  place.  And  besides,  there  were  no 
champagne  corks  among  the  shells.     If  there  ever 

U2 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

was  a  restaurant  there,  it  must  have  been  in  Smyrna's 
palmy  days,  when  the  hills  were  covered  with  palaces. 
I  could  believe  in  one  restaurant,  on  those  terms; 
but  then  how  about  the  three?  Did  they  have  res- 
taurants there  at  three  different  periods  of  the 
world  ?— because  there  are  two  or  three  feet  of  solid 
earth  between  the  oyster  leads.  Evidently,  the 
restaurant  solution  will  not  answer. 

The  hill  might  have  been  the  bottom  of  the  sea, 
once,  and  been  lifted  up,  with  its  oyster-beds,  by  an 
earthquake — but,  then,  how  about  the  crockery? 
And,  moreover,  how  about  three  oyster-beds,  one 
above  another,  and  thick  strata  of  good  honest 
earth  between? 

That  theory  will  not  do.  It  is  just  possible  that 
this  hill  is  Mount  Ararat,  and  that  Noah's  Ark  rested 
here,  and  he  ate  oysters  and  threw  the  shells  over- 
board. But  that  will  not  do,  either.  There  are  the 
three  layers  again  and  the  solid  earth  between — 
and,  besides,  there  were  only  eight  in  Noah's  family, 
and  they  could  not  have  eaten  all  these  oysters  in  the 
two  or  three  months  they  stayed  on  top  of  that 
mountain.  The  beasts — however,  it  is  simply  ab- 
surd to  suppose  he  did  not  know  any  more  than  to 
feed  the  beasts  on  oyster  suppers. 

It  is  painful — it  is  even  humiliating — but  I  am 
reduced  at  last  to  one  slender  theory:  that  the 
oysters  climbed  up  there  of  their  own  accord.  But 
what  object  could  they  have  had  in  view? — what 
did  they  want  up  there?  What  could  any  oyster 
want  to  climb  a  hill  for?  To  climb  a  hill  must 
necessarily  be  fatiguing  and  annoying  exercise  for 

i33 


MARK    TWAIN 

an  oyster.  The  most  natural  conclusion  would  be 
that  the  oysters  climbed  up  there  to  look  at  the 
scenery.  Yet  when  one  comes  to  reflect  upon  the 
nature  of  an  oyster,  it  seems  plain  that  he  does  not 
care  for  scenery.  An  oyster  has  no  taste  for  such 
things;  he  cares  nothing  for  the  beautiful.  An 
oyster  is  of  a  retiring  disposition,  and  not  lively — 
not  even  cheerful  above  the  "average,  and  never 
enterprising.  But,  above  all,  an  oyster  does  not 
take  any  interest  in  scenery — he  scorns  it.  What 
have  I  arrived  at  now?  Simply  at  the  point  I 
started  from,  namely,  those  oyster-shells  are  there,  in 
regular  layers,  five  hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  and 
no  man  knows  how  they  got  there.  I  have  hunted 
up  the  guide-books,  and  the  gist  of  what  they  say 
is  this:  "They  are  there,  but  how  they  got  there 
is  a  mystery." 

Twenty-five  years  ago,  a  multitude  of  people  in 
America  put  on  their  ascension  robes,  took  a  tearful 
leave  of  their  friends,  and  made  ready  to  fly  up  into 
heaven  at  the  first  blast  of  the  trumpet.  But  the 
angel  did  not  blow  it.  Miller's  resurrection  day  was 
a  failure.  The  Millerites  were  disgusted.  I  did  not 
suspect  that  there  were  Millers  in  Asia  Minor,  but  a 
gentleman  tells  me  that  they  had  it  all  set  for  the 
world  to  come  to  an  end  in  Smyrna  one  day  about 
three  years  ago.  There  was  much  buzzing  and 
preparation  for  a  long  time  previously,  and  it  cul- 
minated in  a  wild  excitement  at  the  appointed  time. 
A  vast  number  of  the  populace  ascended  the  citadel 
hill  early  in  the  morning,  to  get  out  of  the  way  of 
the  general  destruction,  and  many  of  the  infatuated 

i34 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

closed  up  their  shops  and  retired  from  all  earthly 
business.  But  the  strange  part  of  it  was  that  about 
three  in  the  afternoon,  while  this  gentleman  and  his 
friends  were  at  dinner  in  the  hotel,  a  terrific  storm 
of  rain,  accompanied  by  thunder  and  lightning, 
broke  forth  and  continued  with  dire  fury  for  two  or 
three  hours.  It  was  a  thing  unprecedented  in 
Smyrna  at  that  time  of  the  year,  and  scared  some 
of  the  most  skeptical.  The  streets  ran  rivers  and 
the  hotel  floor  was  flooded  with  water.  The  dinner 
had  to  be  suspended.  When  the  storm  finished  and 
left  everybody  drenched  through  and  through,  and 
melancholy  and  half-drowned,  the  ascensionists  came 
down  from  the  mountain  as  dry  as  so  many  charity- 
sermons!  They  had  been  looking  down  upon  the 
fearful  storm  going  on  below,  and  really  believed 
that  their  proposed  destruction  of  the  world  was 
proving  a  grand  success. 

A  railway  here  in  Asia — in  the  dreamy  realm  of 
the  Orient — in  the  fabled  land  of  the  Arabian 
Nights — is  a  strange  thing  to  think  of.  And  yet 
they  have  one  already,  and  are  building  another. 
The  present  one  is  well  built  and  well  conducted,  by 
an  English  company,  but  is  not  doing  an  immense 
amount  of  business.  The  first  year  it  carried  a  good 
many  passengers,  but  its  freight  list  only  comprised 
eight  hundred  pounds  of  figs ! 

It  runs  almost  to  the  very  gates  of  Ephesus — a 
town  great  in  all  ages  of  the  world — a  city  familiar 
to  readers  of  the  Bible,  and  one  which  was  as  old  as 
the  very  hills  when  the  disciples  of  Christ  preached 
in  its  streets.     It  dates  back  to  the  shadowy  ages  of 

i3S 


MARK    TWAIN 

tradition,  and  was  the  birthplace  of  gods  renowned 
in  Grecian  mythology.  The  idea  of  a  locomotive 
tearing  through  such  a  place  as  this,  and  waking  the 
phantoms  of  its  old  days  of  romance  out  of  their 
dreams  of  dead  and  gone  centuries,  is  curious 
enough. 

We  journey  thither  to-morrow  to  see  the  cele- 
brated ruins. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THIS  has  been  a  stirring  day.  The  superinten- 
dent of  the  railway  put  a  train  at  our  disposal, 
and  did  us  the  further  kindness  of  accompanying  us 
to  Ephesus  and  giving  to  us  his  watchful  care.  We 
brought  sixty  scarcely  perceptible  donkeys  in  the 
freight-cars,  for  we  had  much  ground  to  go  over. 
We  have  seen  some  of  the  most  grotesque  costumes, 
along  the  line  of  the  railroad,  that  can  be  imagined. 
I  am  glad  that  no  possible  combination  of  words 
could  describe  them,  for  I  might  then  be  foolish 
enough  to  attempt  it. 

At  ancient  Ayassalook,  in  the  midst  of  a  forbid- 
ding desert,  we  came  upon  long  lines  of  ruined 
aqueducts,  and  other  remnants  of  architectural 
grandeur,  that  told  us  plainly  enough  we  were  near- 
ing  what  had  been  a  metropolis  once.  We  left  the 
train  and  mounted  the  donkeys,  along  with  our 
invited  guests — pleasant  young  gentlemen  from  the 
officers'  list  of  an  American  man-of-war. 

The  little  donkeys  had  saddles  upon  them  which 
were  made  very  high  in  order  that  the  rider's  feet 
might  not  drag  the  ground.  The  preventative  did 
not  work  well  in  the  cases  of  our  tallest  pilgrims, 
however.  There  were  no  bridles — nothing  but  a 
single  rope,  tied  to  the  bit.     It  was  purely  orna- 

i37 


MARK    TWAIN 

mental,  for  the  donkey  cared  nothing  for  it.  If  he 
were  drifting  to  starboard,  you  might  put  your  helm 
down  hard  the  other  way,  if  it  were  any  satisfaction 
to  you  to  do  it,  but  he  would  continue  to  drift  to 
starboard  all  the  same.  There  was  only  one  process 
which  could  be  depended  on,  and  that  was  to  get 
down  and  lift  his  rear  around  until  his  head  pointed 
in  the  right  direction,  or  take  him  under  your  arm 
and  carry  him  to  a  part  of  the  road  which  he  could 
not  get  out  of  without  climbing.  The  sun  flamed 
down  as  hot  as  a  furnace,  and  neck-scarfs,  veils,  and 
umbrellas  seemed  hardly  any  protection ;  they  served 
only  to  make  the  long  procession  look  more  than 
ever  fantastic — for  be  it  known  the  ladies  were  all 
riding  astride  because  they  could  not  stay  on  the 
shapeless  saddles  sidewise,  the  men  were  perspiring 
and  out  of  temper,  their  feet  were  banging  against 
the  rocks,  the  donkeys  were  capering  in  every  direc- 
tion but  the  right  one  and  being  belabored  with 
clubs  for  it,  and  every  now  and  then  a  broad  um- 
brella would  suddenly  go  down  out  of  the  cavalcade, 
announcing  to  all  that  one  more  pilgrim  had  bitten 
the  dust.  It  was  a  wilder  picture  than  those  soli- 
tudes had  seen  for  many  a  day.  No  donkeys  ever 
existed  that  were  as  hard  to  navigate  as  these,  I 
think,  or  that  had  so  many  vile,  exasperating  in- 
stincts. Occasionally,  we  grew  so  tired  and  breath- 
less with  fighting  them  that  we  had  to  desist — and 
immediately  the  donkey  would  come  down  to  a  de- 
liberate walk.  This,  with  the  fatigue,  and  the  sun, 
would  put  a  man  asleep;  and  as  soon  as  the  man 
was  asleep,  the  donkey  would  lie  down.     My  donkey 

138 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

shall  never  see  his  boyhood's  home  again.     He  has 
lain  down  once  too  often.     He  must  die. 

We  all  stood  in  the  vast  theater  of  ancient  Ephe- 
eus — the  stone-benched  amphitheater,  I  mean — 
and  had  our  picture  taken.  We  looked  as  proper 
there  as  we  would  look  anywhere,  I  suppose.  We 
do  not  embellish  the  general  desolation  of  a  desert 
much.  We  add  what  dignity  we  can  to  a  stately 
ruin  with  our  green  ^mbrellas  and  jackasses,  but  it 
is  little.     However,  we  mean  well. 

I  wish  to  say  a  brief  word  of  the  aspect  of  Ephesus. 

On  a  high,  steep  hill,  toward  the  sea,  is  a  gray 
ruin  of  ponderous  blocks  of  marble,  wherein,  tradi- 
tion says,  St.  Paul  was  imprisoned  eighteen  centuries 
ago.  From  these  old  walls  you  have  the  finest  view 
of  the  desolate  scene  where  once  stood  Ephesus, 
the  proudest  city  of  ancient  times,  and  whose 
Temple  of  Diana  was  so  noble  in  design  and  so 
exquisite  of  workmanship,  that  it  ranked  high  in  the 
list  of  the  Seven  Wonders  of  the  World. 

Behind  you  is  the  sea;  in  front  is  a  level  green 
valley  (a  marsh,  in  fact),  extending  far  away  among 
the  mountains ;  to  the  right  of  the  front  view  is  the 
old  citadel  of  Ayassalook,  on  a  high  hill ;  the  ruined 
mosque  of  the  Sultan  Selim  stands  near  it  in  the 
plain  (this  is  built  over  the  grave  of  St.  John,  and 
was  formerly  a  Christian  church);  further  toward 
you  is  the  hill  of  Prion,  around  whose  front  is 
clustered  all  that  remains  of  the  ruins  of  Ephesus 
that  still  stand;  divided  from  it  by  a  narrow  valley 
is  the  long,  rocky,  rugged  mountain  of  Coressus. 
The  scene  is  a  pretty  one,   and  yet  desolate — for 

139 


MARK    TWAIN 

in  that  wide  plain  no  man  can  live,  and  in  it  is  no 
human  habitation.  But  for  the  crumbling  arches 
and  monstrous  piers  and  broken  walls  that  rise 
from  the  foot  of  the  hill  of  Prion,  one  could  not 
believe  that  in  this  place  once  stood  a  city  whose 
renown  is  older  than  tradition  itself.  It  is  incredible 
to  reflect  that  things  as  familiar  all  over  the  world 
to-day  as  household  words  belong  in  the  history 
and  in  the  shadowy  legends  of  this  silent,  mournful 
solitude.  We  speak  of  Apollo  and  of  Diana — they 
were  born  here;  of  the  metamorphosis  of  Syrinx 
into  a  reed — it  was  done  here;  of  the  great  god 
Pan — he  dwelt  in  the  caves  of  this  hill  of  Coressus; 
of  the  Amazons — this  was  their  best-prized  home; 
of  Bacchus  and  Hercules — both  fought  the  warlike 
women  here;  of  the  Cyclops — they  laid  the  ponder- 
ous marble  blocks  of  some  of  the  ruins  yonder;  of 
Homer — this  was  one  of  his  many  birthplaces;  of 
Cimon  of  Athens;  of  Alcibiades,  Lysander,  Agesi- 
laus — they  visited  here;  so  did  Alexander  the 
Great;  so  did  Hannibal  and  Antiochus,  Scipio, 
Lucullus,  and  Sylla;  Brutus,  Cassius,  Pompey, 
Cicero,  and  Augustus;  Antony  was  a  judge  in  this 
place,  and  left  his  seat  in  the  open  court,  while  the 
advocates  were  speaking,  to  run  after  Cleopatra, 
who  passed  the  door;  from  this  city  these  two  sailed 
on  pleasure  excursions,  in  galleys  with  silver  oars 
and  perfumed  sails,  and  with  companies  of  beautiful 
girls  to  serve  them,  and  actors  and  musicians  to 
amuse  them;  in  days  that  seem  almost  modern,  so 
remote  are  they  from  the  early  history  of  this  city, 
Paul  the  Apostle  preached  the  new  religion  here, 

140 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  so  did  John,  and  here  it  is  supposed  the  former 
was  pitted  against  wild  beasts,  for  in  I  Corinthians, 
xv :  32,  he  says : 

If  after  the  manner  of  men  I  have  fought  with  beasts  at 
Ephesus  [etc.] 

when  many  men  still  lived  who  had  seen  the  Christ ; 
here  Alary  Magdalen  died,  and  here  the  Virgin  Mary 
ended  her  days  with  John,  albeit  Rome  has  since 
judged  it  best  to  locate  her  grave  elsewhere,  six  or 
seven  hundred  years  ago — almost  yesterday,  as  it 
were — troops  of  mail-clad  Crusaders  thronged  the 
streets;  and  to  come  down  to  trifles,  we  speak  of 
meandering  streams,  and  find  a  new  interest  in  a 
common  word  when  we  discover  that  the  crooked 
river  Meander,  in  yonder  valley,  gave  it  to  our 
dictionary.  It  makes  me  feel  as  old  as  these  dreary 
hills  to  look  down  upon  these  moss-hung  ruins,  this 
historic  desolation.  One  may  read  the  Scriptures 
and  believe,  but  he  cannot  go  and  stand  yonder  in 
the  ruined  theater  and  in  imagination  people  it 
again  with  the  vanished  multitudes  who  mobbed 
Paul's  comrades  there  and  shouted,  with  one  voice, 
"  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephesians!"  The  idea  of 
a  shout  in  such  a  solitude  as  this  almost  makes  one 
shudder. 

It  was  a  wonderful  city,  this  Ephesus.  Go  where 
you  will  about  these  broad  plains,  you  find  the  most 
exquisitely  sculptured  marble  fragments  scattered 
thick  among  the  dust  and  weeds;  and  protruding 
from  the  ground,  or  lying  prone  upon  it,  are  beau- 
tiful fluted  columns  of  porphyry  and  all  precious 

141 


MARK    TWAIN 

marbles;  and  at  every  step  you  find  elegantly  carved 
capitals  and  massive  bases,  and  polished  tablets 
engraved  with  Greek  inscriptions.  It  is  a  world  of 
precious  relics,  a  wilderness  of  marred  and  mutilated 
gems.  And  yet  what  are  these  things  to  the  won- 
ders that  lie  buried  here  under  the  ground?  At 
Constantinople,  at  Pisa,  in  the  cities  of  Spain,  are 
great  mosques  and  cathedrals,  whose  grandest  col- 
umns came  from  the  temples  and  palaces  of  Ephesus, 
and  yet  one  has  only  to  scratch  the  ground  here  to 
match  them.  We  shall  never  know  what  magnifi- 
cence is,  until  this  imperial  city  is  laid  bare  to  the 
sun. 

The  finest  piece  of  sculpture  we  have  yet  seen 
and  the  one  that  impressed  us  most  (for  we  do  not 
know  much  about  art  and  cannot  easily  work  up 
ourselves  into  ecstasies  over  it),  is  one  that  lies  in 
this  old  theater  of  Ephesus  which  St.  Paul's  riot 
has  made  so  celebrated.  It  is  only  the  headless 
body  of  a  man,  clad  in  a  coat  of  mail,  with  a  Medusa 
head  upon  the  breastplate,  but  we  feel  persuaded 
that  such  dignity  and  such  majesty  were  never 
thrown  into  a  form  of  stone  before. 

What  builders  they  were,  these  men  of  antiquity! 
The  massive  arches  of  some  of  these  ruins  rest  upon 
piers  that  are  fifteen  feet  square  and  built  entirely  of 
solid  blocks  of  marble,  some  of  which  are  as  large 
as  a  Saratoga  trunk,  and  some  the  size  of  a  boarding- 
house  sofa.  They  are  not  shells  or  shafts  of  stone 
filled  inside  with  rubbish,  but  the  whole  pier  is  a 
mass  of  solid  masonry.  Vast  arches,  that  may  have 
been  the  gates  of  the  city,  are  built  in  the  same  way. 

14.2 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

They  have  braved  the  storms  and  sieges  of  three 
thousand  years,  and  have  been  shaken  by  many  an 
earthquake,  but  still  they  stand.  When  they  dig 
alongside  of  them,  they  find  ranges  of  ponderous 
masonry  that  are  as  perfect  in  every  detail  as  they 
were  the  day  those  old  Cyclopean  giants  finished 
them.  An  English  company  is  going  to  excavate 
Ephesus — and  then! 

And  now  am  I  reminded  of — 

THE  LEGEND  OF  THE  SEVEN  SLEEPERS 

In  the  Mount  of  Prion,  yonder,  is  the  Cave  of  the 
Seven  Sleepers.  Once  upon  a  time,  about  fifteen 
hundred  years  ago,  seven  young  men  lived  near  each 
other  in  Ephesus,  who  belonged  to  the  despised  sect 
of  the  Christians.  It  came  to  pass  that  the  good 
King  Maximilianus  (I  am  telling  this  story  for  nice 
little  boys  and  girls),  it  came  to  pass,  I  say,  that 
the  good  King  Maximilianus  fell  to  persecuting  the 
Christians,  and  as  time  rolled  on  he  made  it  very 
warm  for  them.  So  the  seven  young  men  said  one  to 
the  other,  Let  us  get  up  and  travel.  And  they  got 
up  and  traveled.  They  tarried  not  to  bid  their 
fathers  and  mothers  good-by,  or  any  friend  they 
knew.  They  only  took  certain  moneys  which  their 
parents  had,  and  garments  that  belonged  unto  their 
friends,  whereby  they  might  remember  them  when 
far  away;  and  they  took  also  the  dog  Ketmehr, 
which  was  the  property  of  their  neighbor  Malchus, 
because  the  beast  did  run  his  head  into  a  noose  which 
one  of  the  young  men  was  carrying  carelessly,  and 

143 


MARK    TWAIN 

they  had  not  time  to  release  him ;  and  they  took  also 
certain  chickens  that  seemed  lonely  in  the  neighbor- 
ing coops,  and  likewise  some  bottles  of  curious 
liquors  that  stood  near  the  grocer's  window;  and 
then  they  departed  from  the  city.  By  and  by  they 
came  to  a  marvelous  cave  in  the  Hill  of  Prion  and 
entered  into  it  and  feasted,  and  presently  they 
hurried  on  again.  But  they  forgot  the  bottles  of 
curious  liquors,  and  left  them  behind.  They  traveled 
in  many  lands,  and  had  many  strange  adventures. 
They  were  virtuous  young  men,  and  lost  no  oppor- 
tunity that  fell  in  their  way  to  make  their  livelihood. 
Their  motto  was  in  these  words,  namely,  "Pro- 
crastination is  the  thief  of  time."  And  so,  when- 
ever they  did  come  upon  a  man  who  was  alone, 
they  said,  Behold,  this  person  hath  the  where- 
withal— let  us  go  through  him.  And  they  went 
through  him.  At  the  end  of  five  years  they  had 
waxed  tired  of  travel  and  adventure,  and  longed  to 
revisit  their  old  home  again  and  hear  the  voices  and 
see  the  faces  that  were  dear  unto  their  youth.  There- 
fore they  went  through  such  parties  as  fell  in  their 
way  where  they  sojourned  at  that  time,  and  jour- 
neyed back  toward  Ephesus  again.  For  the  good 
King  Maximilianus  was  become  converted  unto  the 
new  faith,  and  the  Christians  rejoiced  because  they 
were  no  longer  persecuted.  One  day  as  the  sun  went 
down,  they  came  to  the  cave  in  the  Mount  of  Prion, 
and  they  said,  each  to  his  fellow,  Let  us  sleep  here, 
and  go  and  feast  and  make  merry  with  our  friends 
when  the  morning  cometh.  And  each  of  the  seven 
lifted  up  his  voice  and  said,  It  is  a  whiz.     So  they 

144 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

went  in,  and  lo,  where  they  had  put  them,  there 
lay  the  bottles  of  strange  liquors,  and  they  judged 
that  age  had  not  impaired  their  excellence.  Wherein 
the  wanderers  were  right,  and  the  heads  of  the  same 
were  level.  So  each  of  the  young  men  drank  six 
bottles,  and  behold  they  felt  very  tired,  then,  and 
lay  down  and  slept  soundly. 

When  they  awoke,  one  of  them,  Johannes — sur- 
named  Smithianus — said,  We  are  naked.  And  it 
was  so.  Their  raiment  was  all  gone,  and  the  money 
which  they  had  gotten  from  a  stranger  whom  they 
had  proceeded  through  as  they  approached  the  city, 
was  lying  upon  the  ground,  corroded  and  rusted  and 
defaced.  Likewise  the  dog  Ketmehr  was  gone,  and 
nothing  save  the  brass  that  was  upon  his  collar  re- 
mained. They  wondered  much  at  these  things. 
But  they  took  the  money,  and  they  wrapped  about 
their  bodies  some  leaves,  and  came  up  to  the  top  of 
the  hill.  Then  were  they  perplexed.  The  wonder- 
ful temple  of  Diana  was  gone;  many  grand  edifices 
they  had  never  seen  before  stood  in  the  city;  men 
in  strange  garbs  moved  about  the  streets,  and  every 
thing  was  changed. 

Johannes  said,  It  hardly  seems  like  Ephesus.  Yet 
here  is  the  great  gymnasium;  here  is  the  mighty 
theater,  wherein  I  have  seen  seventy  thousand  men 
assembled ;  here  is  the  Agora ;  there  is  the  font  where 
the  sainted  John  the  Baptist  immersed  the  converts ; 
yonder  is  the  prison  of  the  good  St.  Paul,  where  we 
all  did  use  to  go  to  touch  the  ancient  chains  that 
bound  him  and  be  cured  of  our  distempers;  I  see 
the  tomb  of  the  disciple  Luke,  and  afar  off  is  the 

145 


MARK    TWAIN 

church  wherein  repose  the  ashes  of  the  holy  John, 
where  the  Christians  of  Ephesus  go  twice  a  year  to 
gather  the  dust  from  the  tomb,  which  is  able  to  make 
bodies  whole  again  that  are  corrupted  by  disease, 
and  cleanse  the  soul  from  sin;  but  see  how  the 
wharves  encroach  upon  the  sea,  and  what  multitudes 
of  ships  are  anchored  in  the  bay;  see,  also,  how  the 
city  hath  stretched  abroad,  far  over  the  valley  be- 
hind Prion,  and  even  unto  the  walls  of  Ayassalook; 
and  lo,  all  the  hills  are  white  with  palaces  and  ribbed 
with  colonnades  of  marble.  How  mighty  is  Ephesus 
become ! 

And  wondering  at  what  their  eyes  had  seen,  they 
went  down  into  the  city  and  purchased  garments  and 
clothed  themselves.  And  when  they  would  have 
passed  on,  the  merchant  bit  the  coins  which  they  had 
given  him,  with  his  teeth,  and  turned  them  about 
and  looked  curiously  upon  them,  and  cast  them  upon 
his  counter,  and  listened  if  they  rang;  and  then  he 
said,  These  be  bogus.  And  they  said,  Depart  thou 
to  Hades,  and  went  their  way.  When  they  were 
come  to  their  houses,  they  recognized  them,  albeit 
they  seemed  old  and  mean;  and  they  rejoiced,  and 
were  glad.  They  ran  to  the  doors,  and  knocked, 
and  strangers  opened,  and  looked  inquiringly  upon 
them.  And  they  said,  with  great  excitement,  while 
their  hearts  beat  high,  and  the  color  in  their  faces 
came  and  went,  Where  is  my  father?  Where  is 
my  mother?  Where  are  Dionysius  and  Serapion, 
and  Pericles,  and  Decius?  And  the  strangers  that 
opened  said,  We  know  not  these.  The  Seven  said, 
How,   you  know  them  not?     How  long  have  ye 

140 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

dwelt  here,  and  whither  are  they  gone  that  dwelt 
here  before  ye?  And  the  strangers  said,  Ye  play 
upon  us  with  a  jest,  young  men;  we  and  our  fathers 
have  sojourned  under  these  roofs  these  six  genera- 
tions; the  names  ye  utter  rot  upon  the  tombs,  and 
they  that  bore  them  have  run  their  brief  race,  have 
laughed  and  sung,  have  borne  the  sorrows  and  the 
weariness  that  were  allotted  them,  and  are  at  rest; 
for  ninescore  years  the  summers  have  come  and 
gone,  and  the  autumn  leaves  have  fallen,  since  the 
roses  faded  out  of  their  cheeks  and  they  laid  them 
to  sleep  with  the  dead. 

Then  the  seven  young  men  turned  them  away  from 
their  homes,  and  the  strangers  shut  the  doors  upon 
them.  The  wanderers  marveled  greatly,  and  looked 
into  the  faces  of  all  they  met,  as  hoping  to  find  one 
that  they  knew;  but  all  were  strange,  and  passed 
them  by  and  spake  no  friendly  word.  They  were 
sore  distressed  and  sad.  Presently  they  spake  unto 
a  citizen  and  said,  Who  is  King  in  Ephesus?  And 
the  citizen  answered  and  said,  Whence  come  ye  that 
ye  know  not  that  great  Laertius  reigns  in  Ephesus? 
They  looked  one  at  the  other,  greatly  perplexed,  and 
presently  asked  again,  Where,  then,  is  the  good 
King  Maximilianus  ?  The  citizen  moved  him  apart, 
as  one  who  is  afraid,  and  said,  Verily  these  men  be 
mad,  and  dream  dreams,  else  would  they  know  that 
the  King  whereof  they  speak  is  dead  above  two 
hundred  years  agone. 

Then  the  scales  fell  from  the  eyes  of  the  Seven, 
and  one  said,  Alas,  that  we  drank  of  the  curious 
liquors.     They  have  made  us  weary,  and  in  dream- 

147 


MARK    TWAIN 

less  sleep  these  two  long  centuries  have  we  lain.  Our 
homes  are  desolate,  our  friends  are  dead.  Behold, 
the  jig  is  up — let  us  die.  And  that  same  day  went 
they  forth  and  laid  them  down  and  died.  And  in 
that  selfsame  day,  likewise,  the  Seven-up  did  cease 
in  Ephesus,  for  that  the  Seven  that  were  up  were 
down  again,  and  departed  and  dead  withal.  And 
the  names  that  be  upon  their  tombs,  even  unto  this 
time,  are  Johannes  Smithianus,  Trumps,  Gift,  High, 
and  Low,  Jack,  and  The  Game.  And  with  the 
sleepers  lie  also  the  bottles  wherein  were  once  the 
curious  liquors;  and  upon  them  is  writ,  in  ancient 
letters,  such  words  as  these — names  of  heathen  gods 
of  olden  time,  perchance:  Rumpunch,  Jinsling, 
Eggnog. 

Such  is  the  story  of  the  Seven  Sleepers  (with  slight 
variations),  and  1  know  it  is  true,  because  I  have 
seen  the  cave  myself. 

Really,  so  firm  a  faith  had  the  ancients  in  this 
legend,  that  as  late  as  eight  or  nine  hundred  years 
ago,  learned  travelers  held  it  in  superstitious  fear. 

Two  of  them  record  that  they  ventured  into  it, 
but  ran  quickly  out  again,  not  daring  to  tarry  lest 
they  should  fall  asleep  and  outlive  their  great- 
grandchildren a  century  or  so.  Even  at  this  day  the 
ignorant  denizens  of  the  neighboring  country  prefer 
not  to  sleep  in  it. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WHEN  I  last  made  a  memorandum,  we  were 
at  Ephesus.  We  are  in  Syria,  now,  encamped 
in  the  mountains  of  Lebanon.  The  interregnum  has 
been  long,  both  as  to  time  and  distance.  We 
brought  not  a  relic  from  Ephesus!  After  gathering 
up  fragments  of  sculptured  marbles  and  breaking 
ornaments  from  the  interior  work  of  the  mosques; 
and  after  bringing  them,  at  a  cost  of  infinite  trouble 
and  fatigue,  five  miles  on  muleback  to  the  railway 
depot,  a  government  officer  compelled  all  who  had 
such  things  to  disgorge!  He  had  an  order  from 
Constantinople  to  look  out  for  our  party,  and  see  that 
we  carried  nothing  off.  It  was  a  wise,  a  just,  and  a 
well-deserved  rebuke,  but  it  created  a  sensation.  I 
never  resist  a  temptation  to  plunder  a  stranger',-* 
premises  without  feeling  insufferably  vain  about  it. 
This  time  I  felt  proud  beyond  expression.  I  was 
serene  in  the  midst  of  the  scoldings  that  were  heaped" 
upon  the  Ottoman  government  for  its  affront  offered 
to  a  pleasuring  party  of  entirely  respectable  gentle- 
men and  ladies.  I  said,  "We  that  have  free  souls, 
it  touches  us  not."  The  shoe  not  only  pinched  our 
party,  but  it  pinched  hard;  a  principal  sufferer  dis- 
covered that  the  imperial  order  was  inclosed  in  an 
envelope  bearing  the  seal  of  the  British  Embassy  at 

149 


MARK    TWAIN 

Constantinople,  and  therefore  must  have  been  in- 
spired by  the  representative  of  the  Queen.  This  was 
bad — very  bad.  Coming  solely  from  the  Ottomans, 
it  might  have  signified  only  Ottoman  hatred  of 
Christians,  and  a  vulgar  ignorance  as  to  genteel  meth- 
ods of  expressing  it;  but  coming  from  the  Chris- 
tianized, educated,  politic  British  legation,  it  simply 
intimated  that  we  were  a  sort  of  gentlemen  and  ladies 
who  would  bear  watching!  So  the  party  regarded 
it,  and  were  incensed  accordingly.  The  truth  doubt- 
less was,  that  the  same  precautions  would  have  been 
taken  against  any  travelers,  because  the  English 
Company  who  have  acquired  the  right  to  excavate 
Ephesus,  and  have  paid  a  great  sum  for  that  right, 
need  to  be  protected,  and  deserve  to  be.  They  can- 
not afford  to  run  the  risk  of  having  their  hospitality 
abused  by  travelers,  especially  since  travelers  are 
such  notorious  scorners  of  honest  behavior. 

We  sailed  from  Smyrna,  in  the  wildest  spirit  of 
expectancy,  for  the  chief  feature,  the  grand  goal  of 
the  expedition,  was  near  at  hand — we  were  ap- 
proaching the  Holy  Land!  Such  a  burrowing  into 
the  hold  for  trunks  that  had  lain  buried  for  weeks, 
yes,  for  months;  such  a  hurrying  to  and  fro  above 
decks  and  below;  such  a  riotous  system  of  packing 
and  unpacking;  such  a  littering  up  of  the  cabins 
with  shirts  and  skirts,  and  indescribable  and  unclass- 
able  odds  and  ends;  such  a  making  up  of  bundles, 
and  setting  apart  of  umbrellas,  green  spectacles,  and 
thick  veils;  such  a  critical  inspection  of  saddles  and 
bridles  that  had  never  yet  touched  horses;  such  a 
cleaning  and  loading  of  revolvers  and  examining  of 

ISO 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

bowie-knives;  such  a  half-soling  of  the  seats  of 
pantaloons  with  serviceable  buckskin;  then  such  a 
poring  over  ancient  maps;  such  a  reading  up  of 
Bibles  and  Palestine  travels;  such  a  marking  out  of 
routes;  such  exasperating  efforts  to  divide  up  the 
company  into  little  bands  of  congenial  spirits  who 
might  make  the  long  and  arduous  journey  without 
quarreling;  and  morning,  noon,  and  night,  such 
mass-meetings  in  the  cabins,  such  speech-making, 
such  sage  suggesting,  such  worrying  and  quarreling, 
and  such  a  general  raising  of  the  very  mischief,  was 
never  seen  in  the  ship  before! 

But  it  is  all  over  now.  We  are  cut  up  into  parties 
of  six  or  eight,  and  by  this  time  are  scattered  far  and 
wide.  Ours  is  the  only  one,  however,  that  is  ventur- 
ing on  what  is  called  "the  long  trip" — that  is,  out 
into  Syria,  by  Baalbec  to  Damascus,  and  thence 
down  through  the  full  length  of  Palestine.  It  would 
be  a  tedious,  and  also  a  too  risky  journey,  at  this  hot 
season  of  the  year,  for  any  but  strong,  healthy  men, 
accustomed  somewhat  to  fatigue  and  rough  life  in 
the  open  air.  The  other  parties  will  take  shorter 
journeys. 

For  the  last  two  months  we  have  been  in  a  worry 
about  one  portion  of  this  Holy  Land  pilgrimage.  I 
refer  to  transportation  service.  We  knew  very  well 
that  Palestine  was  a  country  which  did  not  do  a  large 
passenger  business,  and  every  man  we  came  across 
who  knew  anything  about  it  gave  us  to  understand 
that  not  half  of  our  party  would  be  able  to  get  drago- 
mans and  animals.  At  Constantinople  everybody  fell 
to  telegraphing  the  American  consuls  at  Alexandria 

151 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  Beirout  to  give  notice  that  we  wanted  drago- 
mans and  transportation.  We  were  desperate — would 
take  horses,  jackasses,  camelopards,  kangaroos — 
anything.  At  Smyrna,  more  telegraphing  was  done, 
to  the  same  end.  Also,  fearing  for  the  worst,  we 
telegraphed  for  a  large  number  of  seats  in  the  dili- 
gence for  Damascus,  and  horses  for  the  ruins  of 
Baalbec. 

As  might  have  been  expected,  a  notion  got 
abroad  in  Syria  and  Egypt  that  the  whole  population 
of  the  Province  of  America  (the  Turks  consider  us  a 
trifling  little  province  in  some  unvisited  corner  of  the 
world)  were  coming  to  the  Holy  Land — and  so, 
when  we  got  to  Beirout  yesterday,  we  found  the 
place  full  of  dragomans  and  their  outfits.  We  had 
all  intended  to  go  by  diligence  to  Damascus,  and 
switch  off  to  Baalbec  as  we  went  along — because  we 
expected  to  rejoin  the  ship,  go  to  Mount  Carmel, 
and  take  to  the  woods  from  there.  However,  when 
our  own  private  party  of  eight  found  that  it  was  pos- 
sible, and  proper  enough,  to  make  the  "long  trip," 
we  adopted  that  program.  We  have  never  been 
much  trouble  to  a  consul  before,  but  we  have  been 
a  fearful  nuisance  to  our  consul  at  Beirout.  I  men- 
tion this  because  I  cannot  help  admiring  his  patience, 
his  industry,  and  his  accommodating  spirit.  I  men- 
tion it,  also,  because  I  think  some  of  our  ship's 
company  did  not  give  him  as  full  credit  for  his  ex- 
cellent services  as  he  deserved. 

Well,  out  of  our  eight,  three  were  selected  to 
attend  to  all  business  connected  with  the  expedition. 
The  rest  of  us  had  nothing  to  do  but  look  at  the 

152 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

beautiful  city  of  Beirout,  with  its  bright,  new  houses 
nestled  among  a  wilderness  of  green  shrubbery 
spread  abroad  over  an  upland  that  sloped  gently 
down  to  the  sea;  and  also  at  the  mountains  of  Leba- 
non that  environ  it;  and  likewise  to  bathe  in  the 
transparent  blue  water  that  rolled  its  billows  about 
the  ship  (we  did  not  know  there  were  sharks  there). 
We  had  also  to  range  up  and  down  through  the 
town  and  look  at  the  costumes.  These  are  pictu- 
resque and  fanciful,  but  not  so  varied  as  at  Constan- 
tinople and  Smyrna;  the  women  of  Beirout  add  an 
agony — in  the  two  former  cities  the  sex  wear  a  thin 
veil  which  one  can  see  through  (and  they  often  ex- 
pose their  ankles),  but  at  Beirout  they  cover  their 
entire  faces  with  dark-colored  or  black  veils,  so  that 
they  look  like  mummies,  and  then  expose  their 
breasts  to  the  public.  A  young  gentleman  (I  be- 
lieve he  was  a  Greek)  volunteered  to  show  us  around 
the  city,  and  said  it  would  afford  him  great  pleasure, 
because  he  was  studying  English  and  wanted  practice 
in  that  language.  When  we  had  finished  the  rounds, 
however,  he  called  for  remuneration — said  he  hoped 
the  gentlemen  would  give  him  a  trifle  in  the  way  of  a 
few  piasters  (equivalent  to  a  few  five-cent  pieces). 
We  did  so.  The  consul  was  surprised  when  he 
heard  it,  and  said  he  knew  the  young  fellow's  family 
very  well,  and  that  they  were  an  old  and  highly 
respectable  family  and  worth  a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars!  Some  people,  so  situated,  would 
have  been  ashamed  of  the  berth  he  had  with  us  and 
his  manner  of  crawling  into  it. 

At  the  appointed  time  our  business  committee 

i53 


MARK    TWAIN 

reported,  and  said  all  things  were  in  readiness — that 
we  were  to  start  to-day,  with  horses,  pack-animals, 
and  tents,  and  go  to  Baalbec,  Damascus,  the  Sea  of 
Tiberias,  and  thence  southward  by  the  way  of  the 
scene  of  Jacob's  Dream  and  other  notable  Bible 
localities  to  Jerusalem — from  thence  probably  to  the 
Dead  Sea,  but  possibly  not — and  then  strike  for  the 
ocean  and  rejoin  the  ship  three  or  four  weeks  hence 
at  Joppa;  terms,  five  dollars  a  day  apiece,  in  gold, 
and  everything  to  be  furnished  by  the  dragoman. 
They  said  we  would  live  as  well  as  at  a  hotel.  I  had 
read  something  like  that  before,  and  did  not  shame 
my  judgment  by  believing  a  word  of  it.  I  said  noth- 
ing, however,  but  packed  up  a  blanket  and  a  shawl 
to  sleep  in,  pipes  and  tobacco,  two  or  three  woolen 
shirts,  a  portfolio,  a  guide-book,  and  a  Bible.  I 
also  took  along  a  towel  and  a  cake  of  soap,  to  inspire 
respect  in  the  Arabs,  who  would  take  me  for  a 
king  in  disguise. 

We  were  to  select  our  horses  at  3  p.m.  At  that 
hour  Abraham,  the  dragoman,  marshaled  them  be- 
fore us.  With  all  solemnity  I  set  it  down  here,  that 
those  horses  were  the  hardest  lot  I  ever  did  come 
across,  and  their  accoutrements  were  in  exquisite 
keeping  with  their  style.  One  brute  had  an  eye  out ; 
another  had  his  tail  sawed  off  close,  like  a  rabbit,  and 
was  proud  of  it;  another  had  a  bony  ridge  running 
from  his  neck  to  his  tail,  like  one  of  those  ruined 
aqueducts  one  sees  about  Rome,  and  had  a  neck 
on  him  like  a  bowsprit;  they  all  limped,  and  had 
sore  backs,  and  likewise  raw  places  and  old  scales 
scattered  about  their  persons  like  brass  nails  in  a  hair 

154 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

trunk;  their  gaits  were  marvelous  to  contemplate, 
and  replete  with  variety — under  way  the  procession 
looked  like  a  fleet  in  a  storm.  It  was  fearful. 
Blucher  shook  his  head  and  said: 

"That  dragon  is  going  to  get  himself  into  trouble 
fetching  these  old  crates  out  of  the  hospital  the  way 
they  are,  unless  he  has  got  a  permit." 

I  said  nothing.  The  display  was  exactly  according 
to  the  guide-book,  and  were  we  not  traveling  by  the 
guide-book?  I  selected  a  certain  horse  because  I 
thought  I  saw  him  shy,  and  I  thought  that  a  horse 
that  had  spirit  enough  to  shy  was  not  to  be  despised. 

At  6  o'clock  p.m.  we  came  to  a  halt  here  on  the 
breezy  summit  of  a  shapely  mountain  overlooking 
the  sea,  and  the  handsome  valley  where  dwelt  some 
of  those  enterprising  Phoenicians  of  ancient  times 
we  read  so  much  about ;  all  around  us  are  what  were 
once  the  dominions  of  Hiram,  King  of  Tyre,  who 
furnished  timber  from  the  cedars  of  these  Lebanon 
hills  to  build  portions  of  King  Solomon's  Temple 
with. 

Shortly  after  six,  our  pack-train  arrived.  I  had 
not  seen  it  before,  and  a  good  right  I  had  to  be 
astonished.  We  had  nineteen  serving -men  and 
twenty-six  pack-mules!  It  was  a  perfect  caravan. 
It  looked  like  one,  too,  as  it  wound  among  the 
rocks.  I  wondered  what  in  the  very  mischief  we 
wanted  with  such  a  vast  turnout  as  that,  for  eight 
men.  I  wondered  awhile,  but  soon  I  began  to  long 
for  a  tin  plate,  and  some  bacon  and  beans.  I  had 
camped  out  many  and  many  a  time  before,  and 
knew  just  what  was  coming.     I  went  off,  without 

ISS 


MARK    TWAIN 

waiting  for  servirig-men,  and  unsaddled  my  horse, 
and  washed  such  portions  of  his  ribs  and  his  spine 
as  projected  through  his  hide,  and  when  I  came 
back,  behold  five  stately  circus-tents  were  up — tents 
that  were  brilliant,  within,  with  blue  and  gold  and 
crimson,  and  all  manner  of  splendid  adornment!  I 
was  speechless.  Then  they  brought  eight  little  iron 
bedsteads,  and  set  them  up  in  the  tents ;  they  put  a 
soft  mattress  ancl  pillows  and  good  blankets  and  two 
snow-white  sheets  on  each  bed.  Next,  they  rigged 
a  table  about  the  center-pole,  and  on  it  placed 
pewter  pitchers,  basins,  soap,  and  the  whitest  of 
towels — one  set  for  each  man;  they  pointed  to 
pockets  in  the  tent,  and  said  we  could  put  our  small 
trifles  in  them  for  convenience,  and  if  we  needed 
pins  or  such  things,  they  were  sticking  everywhere. 
Then  came  the  finishing  touch — they  spread  carpets 
on  the  floor !  I  simply  said,  ' '  If  you  call  this  camp- 
ing out,  all  right — but  it  isn't  the  style  I  am  used 
to;  my  little  baggage  that  I  brought  along  is  at  a 
discount." 

It  grew  dark,  and  they  put  candles  on  the  tables 
— candles  set  in  bright,  new,  brazen  candlesticks. 
And  soon  the  bell — a  genuine,  simon-pure  bell — 
rang,  and  we  were  invited  to  "the  saloon."  I  had 
thought  before  that  we  had  a  tent  or  so  too  many, 
but  now  here  was  one,  at  least,  provided  for;  it 
was  to  be  used  for  nothing  but  an  eating-saloon. 
Like  the  others,  it  was  high  enough  for  a  family  of 
giraffes  to  live  in,  and  was  very  handsome  and  clean 
and  bright-colored  within.  It  was  a  gem  of  a  place. 
A  table  for  eight,  and  eight  canvas  chairs;  a  table- 

156 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

cloth  and  napkins  whose  whiteness  and  whose  fine- 
ness laughed  to  scorn  the  things  we  were  used  to  in 
the  great  excursion  steamer ;  knives  and  forks,  soup 
plates,  dinner  plates — everything,  in  the  handsomest 
kind  of  style.  It  was  wonderful!  And  they  call 
this  camping  out.  Those  stately  fellows  in  baggy 
trousers  and  turbaned  fezes  brought  in  a  dinner 
which  consisted  of  roast  mutton,  roast  chicken, 
roast  goose,  potatoes,  bread,  tea,  pudding,  apples, 
and  delicious  grapes ;  the  viands  were  better  cooked 
than  any  we  had  eaten  for  weeks,  and  the  table 
made  a  finer  appearance,  with  its  large  German- 
silver  candlesticks  and  other  finery,  than  any  table 
we  had  sat  down  to  for  a  good  while,  and  yet  that 
polite  dragoman,  Abraham,  came  bowing  in  and 
apologizing  for  the  whole  affair,  on  account  of  the 
unavoidable  confusion  of  getting  under  way  for  a 
very  long  trip,  and  promising  to  do  a  great  deal 
better  in  future! 

It  is  midnight  now,  and  we  break  camp  at  six  in 
the  morning. 

They  call  this  camping  out.  At  this  rate  it  is  a 
glorious  privilege  to  be  a  pilgrim  to  the  Holy  Land. 


CHAPTER  XV 

WE  are  camped  near  Temnin-el-Foka — a  name 
which  the  boys  have  simplified  a  good  deal, 
for  the  sake  of  convenience  in  spelling.  They  call 
it  Jacksonville.  It  sounds  a  little  strangely,  here  in 
the  Valley  of  Lebanon,  but  it  has  the  merit  of  being 
easier  to  remember  than  the  Arabic  name. 

COME   LIKE   SPIRITS,   SO  DEPART 

The  night  shall  be  filled  with  music, 
And  the  cares  that  infest  the  day 

Shall  fold  their  tents  like  the  Arabs, 
And  as  silently  steal  away. 

I  slept  very  soundly  last  night,  yet  when  the 
dragoman's  bell  rang  at  half  past  five  this  morning 
and  the  cry  went  abroad  of  "Ten  minutes  to  dress 
for  breakfast!"  I  heard  both.  It  surprised  me, 
because  I  have  not  heard  the  breakfast  gong  in  the 
ship  for  a  month,  and  whenever  we  have  had  occa- 
sion to  fire  a  salute  at  daylight,  I  have  only  found  it 
out  in  the  course  of  conversation  afterward.  How- 
ever, camping  out,  even  though  it  be  in  a  gorgeous 
tent,  makes  one  fresh  and  lively  in  the  morning — 
especially  if  the  air  you  are  breathing  is  the  cool, 
fresh  air  of  the  mountains. 

I  was  dressed  within  the  ten  minutes,  and  came 
out.     The  saloon  tent  had  been  stripped  of  its  sides, 

158 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  had  nothing  left  but  its  roof;  so  when  we  sat 
down  to  table  we  could  look  out  over  a  noble  pano- 
rama of  mountain,  sea,  and  hazy  valley.  And 
sitting  thus,  the  sun  rose  slowly  up  and  suffused  the 
picture  with  a  world  of  rich  coloring. 

Hot  mutton-chops,  fried  chicken,  omelettes,  fried 
potatoes,  and  coffee — all  excellent.  This  was  the 
bill  of  fare.  It  was  sauced  with  a  savage  appetite 
purchased  by  hard  riding  the  day  before,  and  re- 
freshing sleep  in  a  pure  atmosphere.  As  I  called 
for  a  second  cup  of  cof^e,  I  glanced  over  my  shoul- 
der, and  behold,  our  white  village  was  gone — the 
splendid  tents  had  vanished  like  magic!  It  was 
wonderful  how  quickly  those  Arabs  had  "  folded 
their  tents";  and  it  was  wonderful,  also,  how 
quickly  they  had  gathered  the  thousand  odds  and 
ends  of  the  camp  together  and  disappeared  with 
them. 

By  half  past  six  we  were  under  way,  and  all  the 
Syrian  world  seemed  to  be  under  way  also  The 
road  was  filled  with  mule-trains  and  long  processions 
of  camels.  This  reminds  me  that  we  have  been 
trying  for  some  time  to  think  what  a  camel  looks 
like,  and  now  we  have  made  it  out.  When  he  is 
down  on  all  his  knees,  flat  on  his  breast  to  receive 
his  load,  he  looks  something  like  a  goose  swimming; 
and  when  he  is  upright  he  looks  like  an  ostrich  with 
an  extra  set  of  legs.  Camels  are  not  beautiful,  and 
their  long  under-lip  gives  them  an  exceedingly 
"gallus"1  expression.  They  have  immense  flat, 
forked  cushions  of  feet,  that  make  a  track  in  the 
1  Excuse  the  slang — no  other  word  will  describe  it. 
159 


MARK    TWAIN 

dust  like  a  pie  with  a  slice  cut  out  of  it.  They  are 
not  particular  about  their  diet.  They  would  eat  a 
tombstone  if  they  could  bite  it.  A  thistle  grows 
about  here  which  has  needles  on  it  that  would  pierce 
through  leather,  I  think;  if  one  touches  you,  you 
can  find  relief  in  nothing  but  profanity.  The  camels 
eat  these.  They  show  by  their  actions  that  they 
enjoy  them.  I  suppose  it  would  be  a  real  treat  to  a 
camel  to  have  a  keg  of  nails  for  supper. 

While  I  am  speaking  of  animals,  I  will  mention 
that  I  have  a  horse  now  by  the  name  of  "Jericho." 
He  is  a  mare.  I  have  seen  remarkable  horses  be- 
fore, but  none  so  remarkable  as  this.  I  wanted  a 
horse  that  could  shy,  and  this  one  fills  the  bill.  I 
had  an  idea  that  shying  indicated  spirit.  If  I  was 
correct,  I  have  got  the  most  spirited  horse  on  earth. 
He  shies  at  everything  he  comes  across,  with  the 
utmost  impartiality.  He  appears  to  have  a  mortal 
dread  of  telegraph-poles,  especially;  and  it  is  fortu- 
nate that  these  are  on  both  sides  of  the  road,  because 
as  it  is  now,  I  never  fall  off  twice  in  succession  on 
the  same  side.  If  I  fell  on  the  same  side  always,  it 
would  get  to  be  monotonous  after  a  while.  This 
creature  has  scared  at  everything  he  has  seen  to- 
day, except  a  haystack.  He  walked  up  to  that  with 
intrepidity  and  a  recklessness  that  were  astonish- 
ing. And  it  would  fill  any  one  with  admiration  to 
see  how  he  preserves  his  self-possession  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  barley  sack.  This  dare  devil  bravery  will 
be  the  death  of  this  horse  some  day. 

He  is  not  particularly  fast,  but  I  think  he  will  get 
me  through  the  Holy  Land.     He  has  only  one  fault 

160 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

His  tail  has  been  chopped  off  or  else  he  has  sat 
down  on  it  too  hard,  some  time  or  other,  and  he  has 
to  fight  the  flies  with  his  heels.  This  is  all  very 
well,  but  when  he  tries  to  kick  a  fly  off  the  top  of  his 
head  with  his  .hind  foot,  it  is  too  much  variety.  He 
is  going  to  get  himself  into  trouble  that  way  some 
day.  He  reaches  around  and  bites  my  legs,  too. 
I  do  not  care  particularly  about  that,  only  I  do  not 
like  to  see  a  horse  too  sociable. 

I  think  the  owner  of  this  prize  had  a  wrong 
opinion  about  him.  He  had  an  idea  that  he  was 
one  of  those  fiery,  untamed  steeds,  but  he  is  not  of 
that  character.  I  know  the  Arab  had  this  idea,  be- 
cause when  he  brought  the  horse  out  for  inspection 
in  Beirout,  he  kept  jerking  at  the  bridle  and  shout- 
ing in  Arabic,  "Whoa!  will  you?  Do  you  want  to 
run  away,  you  ferocious  beast,  and  break  your 
neck?"  when  all  the  time  the  horse  was  not  doing 
anything  in  the  world,  and  only  looked  like  he 
wanted  to  lean  up  against  something  and  think. 
Whenever  he  is  not  shying  at  things,  or  reaching 
after  a  fly,  he  wants  to  do  that  yet.  How  it  would 
surprise  his  owner  to  know  this. 

We  have  been  in  a  historical  section  of  country  all 
day.  At  noon  we  camped  three  hours  and  took 
luncheon  at  Mekseh,  near  the  junction  of  the 
Lebanon  Mountains  and  the  Jebel  el  Kuneiyiseh* 
and  looked  down  into  the  immense,  level,  garden- 
like Valley  of  Lebanon.  To-night  we  are  camping 
near  the  same  valley,  and  have  a  very  wide  sweep 
of  it  in  view.  We  can  see  the  long,  whale-backed 
ridge  of  Mount  Hermon  projecting  above  the  eastern 

161 


MARK    TWAIN 

hills.     The  "dews  of  Hermon"  are  falling  upon  us 
now,  and  the  tents  are  almost  soaked  with  them. 

Over  the  way  from  us,  and  higher  up  the  valley, 
we  can  discern,  through  the  glasses,  the  faint  out- 
lines of  the  wonderful  ruins  of  Baalbec,  the  sup- 
posed Baal-Gad  of  Scripture.  Joshua  and  another 
person  were  the  two  spies  who  were  sent  into  this 
land  of  Canaan  by  the  children  of  Israel  to  report 
upon  its  character — I  mean  they  were  the  spies  who 
reported  favorably.  They  took  back  with  them 
some  specimens  of  the  grapes  of  this  country,  and 
in  the  children's  picture-books  they  are  always 
represented  as  bearing  one  monstrous  bunch  swung 
to  a  pole  between  them,  a  respectable  load  for  a 
pack-train.  The  Sunday-school  books  exaggerated 
it  a  little.  The  grapes  are  most  excellent  to  this 
day,  but  the  bunches  are  not  as  large  as  those  in 
the  pictures.  I  was  surprised  and  hurt  when  I  saw 
them,  because  those  colossal  bunches  of  grapes 
were  one  of  my  most  cherished  juvenile  traditions. 

Joshua  reported  favorably,  and  the  children  of 
Israel  journeyed  on,  with  Moses  at  the  head  of  the 
general  government,  and  Joshua  in  command  of  the 
army  of  six  hundred  thousand  fighting  men.  Of 
women  and  children  and  civilians  there  was  a  count- 
less swarm.  Of  all  that  mighty  host,  none  but  the 
two  faithful  spies  ever  lived  to  set  their  feet  in  the 
Promised  Land.  They  and  their  descendants  wan- 
dered forty  years  in  the  desert,  and  then  Moses,  the 
gifted  warrior,  poet,  statesman,  and  philosopher, 
went  up  into  Pisgah  and  met  his  mysterious  fate. 
Where  he  was  buried  no  man  knows — for 

162 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

.     .     .    no  man  dug  that  sepulcherf 

And  no  man  saw  it  e'er — 
For  the  sons  of  God  upturned  the  sod 

And  laid  the  dead  man  there! 

Then  Joshua  began  his  terrible  raid,  and  from 
Jericho  clear  to  this  Baal-Gad,  he  swept  the  land 
like  the  Genius  of  Destruction.  He  slaughtered  the 
people,  laid  waste  their  soil,  and  razed  their  cities  to 
the  ground.  He  wasted  thirty-one  kings  also.  One 
may  call  it  that,  though  really  it  can  hardly  be 
called  wasting  them,  because  there  were  always 
plenty  of  kings  in  those  days,  and  to  spare.  At 
any  rate,  he  destroyed  thirty-one  kings,  and  divided 
up  their  realms  among  his  Israelites.  He  divided 
up  this  valley  stretched  out  here  before  us,  and  so 
it  was  once  Jewish  territory.  The  Jews  have  long 
since  disappeared  from  it,  however. 

Back  yonder,  an  hour's  journey  from  here,  we 
passed  through  an  Arab  village  of  stone  dry-goods 
boxes  (they  look  like  that),  where  Noah's  tomb  lies 
under  lock  and  key.  [Noah  built  the  ark.]  Over 
these  old  hills  and  valleys  the  ark  that  contained  all 
that  was  left  of  a  vanished  world  once  floated. 

I  make  no  apology  for  detailing  the  above  informa- 
tion. It  will  be  news  to  some  of  my  readers,  at 
any  rate. 

Noah's  tomb  is  built  of  stone,  and  is  covered  with 
a  long  stone  building.  Bucksheesh  let  us  in.  The 
building  had  to  be  long,  because  the  gra^e  of  the 
honored  old  navigator  is  two  hundred  and  ten  feet 
long  itself!  It  is  only  about  four  feet  high,  though. 
He  must  have  cast  a  shadow  like  a  lightning-rod. 

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MARK    TWAIN 

The  proof  that  this  is  the  genuine  spot  where  Noah 
was  buried  can  only  be  doubted  by  uncommonly 
incredulous  people.  The  evidence  is  pretty  straight. 
Shem,  the  son  of  Noah,  was  present  at  the  burial, 
and  showed  the  place  to  his  descendants,  who  trans- 
mitted the  knowledge  to  their  descendants,  and  the 
lineal  descendants  of  these  introduced  themselves  to 
us  to-day.  It  was  pleasant  to  make  the  acquaintance 
of  members  of  so  respectable  a  family.  It  was  a 
thing  to  be  proud  of.  It  was  the  next  thing  to 
being  acquainted  with  Noah  himself. 

Noah's  memorable  voyage  will  always  possess  a 
living  interest  for  me,  henceforward. 

If  ever  an  oppressed  race  existed,  it  is  this  one  we 
see  fettered  around  us  under  the  inhuman  tyrarmy 
of  the  Ottoman  empire.  I  wish  Europe  would  let 
Russia  annihilate  Turkey  a  little — not  much,  but 
enough  to  make  it  difficult  to  find  the  place  again 
without  a  divining-rod  or  a  diving-bell.  The  Syrians 
are  very  poor,  and  yet  they  are  ground  down  by  a 
system  of  taxation  that  would  drive  any  other  nation 
frantic.  Last  year  their  taxes  were  heavy  enough, 
in  all  conscience — but  this  year  they  have  been 
increased  by  the  addition  of  taxes  that  were  forgiven 
them  in  times  of  famine  in  former  years.  On  top 
of  this  the  government  has  levied  a  tax  of  one-tenth 
of  the  whole  proceeds  of  the  land.  This  is  only 
half  the  story.  The  Pasha  of  a  Pashalic  does  not 
trouble  himself  with  appointing  tax-collectors.  He 
figures  up  what  all  these  taxes  ought  to  amount  to 
in  a  certain  district.  Then  he  farms  the  collection 
-out.     He  calls  the  rich  men  together,  the  highest 

164. 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

bidder  gets  the  speculation,  pays  the  Pasha  on  the 
spot,  and  then  sells  out  to  smaller  fry,  who  sell  in 
turn  to  a  piratical  horde  of  still  smaller  fry.  These 
latter  compel  the  peasant  to  bring  his  little  trifle  of 
grain  to  the  village,  at  his  own  cost.  It  must  be 
weighed,  the  various  taxes  set  apart,  and  the  remain- 
der returned  to  the  producer.  But  the  collector 
delays  this  duty  day  after  day,  while  the  producer's 
family  are  perishing  for  bread;  at  last  the  poor 
wretch,  who  cannot  but  understand  the  game,  says, 
''Take  a  quarter — take  half — take  two-thirds  if 
you  will,  and  let  me  go!"  It  is  a  most  outrageous 
state  of  things. 

These  people  are  naturally  good-hearted  and  intel- 
ligent, and,  with  education  and  liberty,  would  be  a 
happy  and  contented  race.  They  often  appeal  to 
the  stranger  to  know  if  the  great  world  will  not  some 
day  come  to  their  relief  and  save  them.  The  Sultan 
has  been  lavishing  money  like  water  in  England  and 
Paris,  but  his  subjects  are  suffering  for  it  now. 

This  fashion  of  camping  out  bewilders  me.  We 
have  bootjacks  and  a  bathtub  now,  and  yet  all  the 
mysteries  the  pack-mules  carry  are  not  revealed. 
What  next? 


CHAPTER  XVI 

WE  had  a  tedious  ride  of  about  five  hours,  in  thfe 
sun,  across  the  Valley  of  Lebanon.  It  proved 
to  be  not  quite  so  much  of  a  garden  as  it  had  seemed 
from  the  hillsides.  It  was  a  desert,  weed-grown 
waste,  littered  thickly  with  stones  the  size  of  a  man's 
fist.  Here  and  there  the  natives  had  scratched 
the  ground  and  reared  a  sickly  crop  of  grain,  but 
for  the  most  part  the  valley  was  given  up  to  a 
handful  of  shepherds,  whose  flocks  were  doing 
what  they  honestly  could  to  get  a  living,  but  the 
chances  were  against  them.  We  saw  rude  piles  of 
stones  standing  near  the  roadside,  at  intervals,  and 
recognized  the  custom  of  marking  boundaries  which 
obtained  in  Jacob's  time.  There  were  no  walls,  no 
fences,  no  hedges — nothing  to  secure  a  man's  pos- 
sessions but  these  random  heaps  of  stones.  The 
Israelites  held  them  sacred  in  the  old  patriarchal 
times,  and  these  other  Arabs,  their  lineal  descend- 
ants, do  so  likewise.  An  American,  of  ordinary 
intelligence,  would  soon  widely  extend  his  property, 
at  an  outlay  of  mere  manual  labor,  performed  at 
night,  under  so  loose  a  system  of  fencing  as  this. 

The  plows  these  people  use  are  simply  a  sharp- 
ened stick,  such  as  Abraham  plowed  with,  and  they 
still  winnow  their  wheat  as  he  did — they  pile  it  on 

1 66 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  housetop,  and  then  toss  it  by  shovelfuls  into 
the  air  until  the  wind  has  blown  all  the  chaff  away. 

We  had  a  fine  race,  of  a  mile,  with  an  Arab 
perched  on  a  camel.  Some  of  the  horses  were  fast, 
and  made  very  good  time,  but  the  camel  scampered 
by  them  without  any  very  great  effort.  The  yelling 
and  shouting,  and  whipping  and  galloping,  of  all 
parties  interested,  made  it  an  exhilarating,  exciting, 
and  particularly  boisterous  race. 

At  eleven  o'clock,  our  eyes  fell  upon  the  walls 
and  columns  of  Baalbec,  a  noble  ruin  whose  history 
is  a  sealed  book.  It  has  stood  there  for  thousands 
of  years,  the  wonder  and  admiration  of  travelers; 
but  who  built  it,  or  when  it  was  built,  are  questions 
that  may  never  be  answered.  One  thing  is  very 
sure,  though.  Such  grandeur  of  design,  and  such 
grace  of  execution,  as  one  sees  in  the  temples  of 
Baalbec,  have  not  been  equaled  or  even  approached 
in  any  work  of  men's  hands  that  has  been  built 
within  twenty  centuries  past. 

The  great  Temple  of  the  Sun,  the  Temple  of 
Jupiter,  and  several  smaller  temples,  are  clustered 
together  in  the  midst  of  one  of  these  miserable 
Syrian  villages,  and  look  strangely  enough  in  such 
plebeian  company.  These  temples  are  built  upon 
massive  substructions  that  might  support  a  world, 
almost;  the  materials  used  are  blocks  of  stone  as 
large  as  an  omnibus — very  few,  if  any,  of  them  are 
smaller  than  a  carpenter's  tool  chest — and  these 
substructions  are  traversed  by  tunnels  of  masonry7 
through  which  a  train  of  cars  might  pass.  With 
such  foundations  as  these,  it  is  little  wonder  that 

167 


MARK    TWAIN 

Baalbec  has  lasted  so  long.  The  Temple  of  the 
Sun  is  nearly  three  hundred  feet  long  and  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty  feet  wide.  It  had  fifty-four  columns 
around  it,  but  only  six  are  standing  now — the 
others  lie  broken  at  its  base,  a  confused  and  pic- 
turesque heap.  The  six  columns  are  perfect,  as 
also  are  their  bases,  Corinthian  capitals  and  entabla- 
ture— and  six  more  shapely  columns  do  not  exist. 
The  columns  and  the  entablature  together  are  ninety 
feet  high — a  prodigious  altitude  for  shafts  of  stone 
to  reach,  truly — and  yet  one  only  thinks  of  their 
beauty  and  symmetry  when  looking  at  them;  the 
pillars  look  slender  and  delicate,  the  entablature, 
with  its  elaborate  sculpture,  looks  like  rich  stucco- 
work.  But  when  you  have  gazed  aloft  till  your  eyes 
are  weary,  you  glance  at  the  great  fragments  of 
pillars  among  which  you  are  standing,  and  find  that 
they  are  eight  feet  through ;  and  with  them  lie  beau- 
tiful capitals  apparently  as  large  as  a  small  cottage; 
and  also  single  slabs  of  stone,  superbly  sculptured, 
that  are  four  or  five  feet  thick,  and  would  com- 
pletely cover  the  floor  of  any  ordinary  parlor.  You 
wonder  where  these  monstrous  things  came  from» 
and  it  takes  some  little  time  to  satisfy  yourself  that, 
the  airy  and  graceful  fabric  that  towers  above  youi? 
head  is  made  up  of  their  mates.  It  seems  too 
preposterous. 

The  Temple  of  Jupiter  is  a  smaller  ruin  than  the 
one  I  have  been  speaking  of,  and  yet  is  immense. 
It  is  in  a  tolerable  state  of  preservation.  One  row 
of  nine  columns  stands  almost  uninjured.  They  are 
sixty-five  feet  high  and  support  a  sort  of  porch  or 

1 68 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

roof,  which  connects  them  with  the  roof  of  the 
building.  This  porch-roof  is  composed  of  tremen- 
dous slabs  of  stone,  which  are  so  finely  sculptured 
on  the  under  side  that  the  work  looks  like  a  fresco 
from  below.  One  or  two  of  these  slabs  had  fallen, 
and  again  I  wondered  if  the  gigantic  masses  of 
carved  stone  that  lay  about  me  were  no  larger  than 
those  above  my  head.  Within  the  temple,  the 
ornamentation  was  elaborate  and  colossal.  What  a 
wonder  of  architectural  beauty  and  grandeur  this 
edifice  must  have  been  when  it  was  new !  And  what 
a  noble  picture  it  and  its  statelier  companion,  with 
the  chaos  of  mighty  fragments  scattered  about  them, 
yet  make  in  the  moonlight! 

I  cannot  conceive  how  these  immense  blocks  of 
stone  were  ever  hauled  from  the  quarries,  or  how 
they  were  ever  raised  to  the  dizzy  heights  they 
occupy  in  the  temples.  And  yet  these  sculptured 
blocks  are  trifles  in  size  compared  with  the  rough- 
hewn  blocks  that  form  the  wide  veranda  or  platform 
which  surrounds  the  Great  Temple.  One  stretch  of 
that  platform,  two  hundred  feet  long,  is  composed  of 
blocks  of  stone  as  large  and  some  of  them  larger, 
than  a  street-car.  They  surmount  a  wall  about  ten 
or  twelve  feet  high.  I  thought  those  were  large 
rocks,  but  they  sank  into  insignificance  compared 
with  those  which  formed  another  section  of  the 
platform.  These  were  three  in  number,  and  I 
thought  that  each  of  them  was  about  as  long  as 
three  street-cars  placed  end  to  end,  though,  of 
course,  they  are  a  third  wider  and  a  third  higher 
than  a  street -car.     Perhaps  two  railway  freight -cars 

169 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  the  largest  pattern,  placed  end  to  end,  might 
better  represent  their  size.  In  combined  length 
these  three  stones  stretch  nearly  two  hundred  feet; 
they  are  thirteen  feet  square;  two  of  them  are  sixty- 
four  feet  long  each,  and  the  third  is  sixty-nine. 
They  are  built  into  the  massive  wall  some  twenty 
feet  above  the  ground.  They  are  there,  but  how 
they  got  there  is  the  question.  I  have  seen  the  hull 
of  a  steamboat  that  was  smaller  than  one  of  those 
stones.  All  these  great  walls  are  as  exact  and 
shapely  as  the  flimsy  things  we  build  of  bricks  in 
these  days.  A  race  of  gods  or  of  giants  must  have 
inhabited  Baalbec  many  a  century  ago.  Men  like 
the  men  of  our  day  could  hardly  rear  such  temples 
as  these. 

We  went  to  the  quarry  from  whence  the  stones  of 
Baalbec  were  taken.  It  was  about  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  off,  and  downhill.  In  a  great  pit  lay  the  mate 
of  the  largest  stone  in  the  ruins.  It  lay  there  just 
as  the  giants  of  that  old  forgotten  time  had  left  it 
when  they  were  called  hence — just  as  they  had  left 
it,  to  remain  for  thousands  of  years,  an  eloquent 
rebuke  unto  such  as  are  prone  to  think  slightingly  of 
the  men  who  lived  before  them.  This  enormous 
block  lies  there,  squared  and  ready  for  the  builders' 
hands — a  solid  mass  fourteen  feet  by  seventeen, 
and  but  a  few  inches  less  than  seventy  feet  long! 
Two  buggies  could  be  driven  abreast  of  each  other, 
on  its  surface,  from  one  end  of  it  to  the  other,  and 
leave  room  enough  for  a  man  or  two  to  walk  on 
either  side. 

One  might  swear  that  all  the  John  Smiths  and 

170 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

George  Wilkinsons,  and  all  the  other  pitiful  nobodies 
between  Kingdom  Come  and  Baalbec  would  inscribe 
their  poor  little  names  upon  the  walls  of  Baalbec' s 
magnificent  ruins,  and  would  add  the  town,  the 
county,  and  the  state  they  came  from — and,  swearing 
thus,  be  infallibly  correct.  It  is  a  pity  some  great 
ruin  does  not  fall  in  and  flatten  out  some  of  these 
reptiles,  and  scare  their  kind  out  of  ever  giving  their 
names  to  fame  upon  any  walls  or  monuments  again, 
forever. 

Properly,  with  the  sorry  relics  we  bestrode,  it  was 
a  three  days'  journey  to  Damascus.  It  was  neces- 
sary that  we  should  do  it  in  less  than  two.  It  was 
necessary  because  our  three  pilgrims  would  not 
travel  on  the  Sabbath  day.  We  were  all  perfectly 
willing  to  keep  the  Sabbath  day,  but  there  are  times 
when  to  keep  the  letter  of  a  sacred  law  whose  spirit 
is  righteous,  becomes  a  sin,  and  this  was  a  case  in 
point.  We  pleaded  for  the  tired,  ill-treated  horses, 
and  tried  to  show  that  their  faithful  service  deserved 
kindness  in  return,  and  their  hard  lot  compassion. 
But  when  did  ever  self -righteousness  know  the  senti- 
ment of  pity?  What  were  a  few  long  hours  added 
to  the  hardships  of  some  overtaxed  brutes  when 
weighed  against  the  peril  of  those  human  souls?  It 
was  not  the  most  promising  party  to  travel  with  and 
hope  to  gain  a  higher  veneration  for  religion  through 
the  example  of  its  devotees.  We  said  the  Saviour, 
who  pitied  dumb  beasts  and  taught  that  the  ox  must 
be  rescued  from  the  mire  even  on  the  Sabbath  day, 
would  not  have  counseled  a  forced  march  like  this. 
We  said  the  "long  trip"  was  exhausting  and  there- 

171 


MARK    TWAIN 

fore  dangerous  in  the  blistering  heats  of  summer, 
even  when  the  ordinary  days'  stages  were  traversed, 
and  if  we  persisted  in  this  hard  march,  some  of  us 
might  be  stricken  down  with  the  fevers  of  the 
country  in  consequence  of  it.  Nothing  could  move 
the  pilgrims.  They  must  press  on.  Men  might 
die,  horses  might  die,  but  they  must  enter  upon 
holy  soil  next  week,  with  no  Sabbath -breaking  stain 
upon  them.  Thus  they  were  willing  to  commit  a 
sin  against  the  spirit  of  religious  law,  in  order  that 
they  might  preserve  the  letter  of  it.  It  was  not 
worth  while  to  tell  them  "the  letter  kills."  I  am 
talking  now  about  personal  friends;  men  whom  I 
like;  men  who  are  good  citizens;  who  are  honor- 
able, upright,  conscientious:  but  whose  idea  of  the 
Saviour's  religion  seems  to  me  distorted.  They 
lecture  our  shortcomings  unsparingly,  and  every 
night  they  call  us  together  and  read  to  us  chapters 
from  the  Testament  that  are  full  of  gentleness,  of 
charity,  and  of  tender  mercy;  and  then  all  the  next 
day  they  stick  to  their  saddles  clear  up  to  the  sum- 
mits of  these  rugged  mountains,  and  clear  down 
again.  Apply  the  Testament's  gentleness,  and 
charity,  and  tender  mercy  to  a  toiling,  worn,  and 
weary  horse  ?  Nonsense — these  are  for  God's  human 
creatures,  not  His  dumb  ones.  What  the  pilgrims 
choose  to  do,  respect  for  their  almost  sacred  char- 
acter demands  that  I  should  allow  to  pass — but 
I  would  so  like  to  catch  any  other  member  of  the 
party  riding  his  horse  up  one  of  these  exhausting 
hills  once ! 

We  have  given  the  pilgrims  a  good  many  exam- 

172 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

pies  that  might  benefit  them,  but  it  is  virtue  thrown 
away.  They  have  never  heard  a  cross  word  out  of 
our  lips  toward  each  other — but  they  have  quarreled 
once  or  twice.  We  love  to  hear  them  at  it,  after 
they  have  been  lecturing  us.  The  very  first  thing 
they  did,  coming  ashore  at  Beirout,  was  to  quarrel 
in  the  boat.  I  have  said  I  like  them,  and  I  do  like 
them — but  every  time  they  read  me  a  scorcher  of  a 
lecture  I  mean  to  talk  back  in  print. 

Not  content  with  doubling  the  legitimate  stages, 
they  switched  off  the  main  road  and  went  away  out 
of  the  way  to  visit  an  absurd  fountain  called  Figia, 
because  Balaam's  ass  had  drank  there  once.  So  we 
journeyed  on,  through  the  terrible  hills  and  deserts 
and  the  roasting  sun,  and  then  far  into  the  night, 
seeking  the  honored  pool  of  Balaam's  ass,  the  patron 
saint  of  all  pilgrims  like  us.  I  find  no  entry  but  this 
in  my  note-book : 

Rode  to-day,  altogether,  thirteen  hours,  through  deserts, 
partly,  and  partly  over  barren,  unsightly  hills,  and  latterly 
through  wild,  rocky  scenery,  and  camped  at  about  eleven 
o'clock  at  night  on  the  banks  of  a  limpid  stream,  near  a  Syrian 
village.  Do  not  know  its  name — do  not  wish  to  know  it — 
want  to  go  to  bed.  Two  horses  lame  (mine  and  Jack's)  and 
the  others  worn  out.  Jack  and  I  walked  three  or  four  miles, 
over  the  hills,  and  led  the  horses.     Fun — but  of  a  mild  type. 

Twelve  or  thirteen  hours  in  the  saddle,  even  in  a 
Christian  land  and  a  Christian  climate,  and  on  a 
good  horse,  is  a  tiresome  journey;  but  in  an  oven 
like  Syria,  in  a  ragged  spoon  of  a  saddle  that  slips 
fore-and-aft,  and  "thort-ships,"  and  every  way,  and 
on  a  horse  that  is  tired  and  lame,  and  yet  must  be 

173 


MARK    TWAIN 

whipped  and  spurred  with  hardly  a  moments  cessa- 
tion all  day  long,  till  the  blood  comes  from  his  side, 
and  your  conscience  hurts  you  every  time  you 
strike,  if  you  are  half  a  man, — it  is  a  journey  to  be 
remembered  in  bitterness  of  spirit  and  execrated 
with  emphasis  for  a  liberal  division  of  a  man's  life- 
time. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

'T*HE  next  day  was  an  outrage  upon  men  and 
1  horses  both.  It  was  another  thirteen  -  hour 
stretch  (including  an  hour's  " nooning").  It  was 
over  the  barrenest  chalk-hills  and  through  the  bald- 
est canons  that  even  Syria  can  show.  The  heat 
quivered  in  the  air  everywhere.  In  the  canons  we 
almost  smothered  in  the  baking  atmosphere.  On 
high  ground,  the  reflection  from  the  chalk-hills  was 
blinding.  It  was  cruel  to  urge  the  crippled  horses, 
but  it  had  to  be  done  in  order  to  make  Damascus 
Saturday  night.  We  saw  ancient  tombs  and  temples 
of  fanciful  architecture  carved  out  of  the  solid  rock 
high  up  in  the  face  of  precipices  above  our  heads, 
but  we  had  neither  time  nor  strength  to  climb  up 
there  and  examine  them.  The  terse  language  of  my 
note-book  will  answer  for  the  rest  of  this  day's  ex- 
periences : 

Broke  camp  at  7  a.m.,  and  made  a  ghastly  trip  through  the 
Zeb  Dana  valley  and  the  rough  mountains — horses  limping  and 
that  Arab  screech-owl  that  does  most  of  the  singing  and  carries 
the  water-skins,  always  a  thousand  miles  ahead  of  course,  and 
no  water  to  drink — will  he  never  die?  Beautiful  stream  in  a 
chasm,  lined  thick  with  pomegranate,  fig,  olive,  and  quince 
orchards,  and  nooned  an  hour  at  the  celebrated  Balaam's  Ass 
Fountain  of  Figia,  second  in  size  in  Syria,  and  the  coldest  water 
out  of  Siberia — guide-books  do  not  say  Balaam's  ass  ever  drank 

175 


MARK    TWAIN 

there  —  somebody  been  imposing  on  the  pilgrims,  maybe. 
Bathed  in  it — Jack  and  I.  Only  a  second — ice-water.  It  is  the 
principal  source  of  the  Abana  River — only  one-half  mile  down 
to  where  it  joins.  Beautiful  place — giant  trees  ail  around — so 
shady  and  cool,  if  one  could  keep  awake — vast  stream  gushes 
straight  out  from  under  the  mountain  in  a  torrent.  Over  it  is 
a  very  ancient  ruin,  with  no  known  history — supposed  to  have 
been  for  the  worship  of  the  deity  of  the  fountain  or  Balaam's 
ass  or  somebody.  Wretched  nest  of  human  vermin  about  the 
fountain — rags,  dirt,  sunken  cheeks,  pallor  of  sickness,  sores, 
projecting  bones,  dull,  aching  misery  in  their  eyes  and  ravenous 
hunger  speaking  from  every  eloquent  fiber  and  muscle  from 
head  to  foot.  How  they  sprang  upon  a  bone,  how  they  crunched 
the  bread  we  gave  them!  Such  as  these  to  swarm  about  one  and 
watch  every  bite  he  takes  with  greedy  looks,  and  swallow  un- 
consciously every  time  he  swallows,  as  if  they  half  fancied  the 
precious  morsel  went  down  their  own  throats — hurry  up  the 
caravan! — I  never  shall  enjoy  a  meal  in  this  distressful  country. 
To  think  of  eating  three  times  every  day  under  such  circum- 
stances for  three  weeks  yet — it  is  worse  punishment  than  riding 
all  day  in  the  sun.  There  are  sixteen  starving  babies  from  one 
to  six  years  old  in  the  party,  and  their  legs  are  no  larger  than 
broom-handles.  Left  the  fountain  at  i  p.m.  (the  fountain  took 
us  at  least  two  hours  out  of  our  way),  and  reached  Mohammed's 
lookout  perch,  over  Damascus,  in  time  to  get  a  good  long  look 
before  it  was  necessary  to  move  on.  Tired?  Ask  of  the  winds 
that  far  away  with  fragments  strewed  the  sea. 

As  the  glare  of  day  mellowed  into  twilight,  we 
looked  down  upon  a  picture  which  is  celebrated  all 
over  the  world.  I  think  I  have  read  about  four 
hundred  times  that  when  Mohammed  was  a  simple 
camel-driver  he  reached  this  point  and  looked  down 
upon  Damascus  for  the  first  time,  and  then  made  a 
certain  renowned  remark.  He  said  man  could  enter 
only  one  paradise;  he  preferred  to  go  to  the  one 
above.  So  he  sat  down  there  and  feasted  his  eyes 
upon  the  earthly  paradise  of  Damascus,  and  then 

176 


THE   INNOCENTS  ABROAD 

went  away  without  entering  its  gates.  They  have 
erected  a  tower  on  the  hill  to  mark  the  spot  where 
he  stood. 

Damascus  is  beautiful  from  the  mountain.  It  is 
beautiful  even  to  foreigners  accustomed  to  luxuriant 
vegetation,  and  I  can  easily  understand  how  un- 
speakably beautiful  it  must  be  to  eyes  that  are  only 
used  to  the  God-forsaken  barrenness  and  desolation 
of  Syria.  I  should  think  a  Syrian  would  go  wild 
with  ecstasy  when  such  a  picture  bursts  upon  him 
for  the  first  time. 

From  his  high  perch,  one  sees  before  him  and 
below  him  a  wall  of  dreary  mountains,  shorn  of 
vegetation,  glaring  fiercely  in  the  sun;  it  fences  in 
a  level  desert  of  yellow  sand,  smooth  as  velvet  and 
threaded  far  away  with  fine  lines  that  stand  for  roads, 
and  dotted  with  creeping  mites  we  know  are  camel- 
trains  and  journeying  men ;  right  in  the  midst  of  the 
desert  is  spread  a  billowy  expanse  of  green  foliage; 
and  nestling  in  its  heart  sits  the  great  white  city,  like 
an  island  of  pearls  and  opals  gleaming  out  of  a  sea 
of  emeralds.  This  is  the  picture  you  see  spread  far 
below  you,  with  distance  to  soften  it,  the  sun  to 
glorify  it,  strong  contrasts  to  heighten  the  effects, 
and  over  it  and  about  it  a  drowsing  air  of  repose  to 
spiritualize  it  and  make  it  seem  rather  a  beautiful 
estray  from  the  mysterious  worlds  we  visit  in  dreams 
than  a  substantial  tenant  of  our  coarse,  dull  globe. 
And  when  you  think  of  the  leagues  of  blighted, 
blasted,  sandy,  rocky,  sunburnt,  ugly,  dreary,  in- 
famous country  you  have  ridden  over  to  get  here, 
you  think  it  is  the  most  beautiful,  beautiful  picturt 

177 


MARK    TWAIN 

that  ever  human  eyes  rested  upon  in  all  the  broad 
universe!  If  I  were  to  go  to  Damascus  again,  I 
would  camp  on  Mohammed's  hill  about  a  week,  and 
then  go  away.  There  is  no  need  to  go  inside  the 
walls.  The  Prophet  was  wise  without  knowing  it 
when  he  decided  not  to  go  down  into  the  paradise 
of  Damascus. 

There  is  an  honored  old  tradition  that  the  immense 
garden  which  Damascus  stands  in  was  the  Garden  of 
Eden,  and  modern  writers  have  gathered  up  many 
chapters  of  evidence  tending  to  show  that  it  really 
was  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and  that  the  rivers  Phar- 
par  and  Abana  are  the  "two  rivers"  that  watered 
Adam's  Paradise.  It  may  be  so,  but  it  is  not  para- 
dise now,  and  one  would  be  as  happy  outside  of  it 
as  he  would  be  likely  to  be  within.  It  is  so  crooked 
and  cramped  and  dirty  that  one  cannot  realize  that 
he  is  in  the  splendid  city  he  saw  from  the  hilltop. 
The  gardens  are  hidden  by  high  mud-walls,  and  the 
paradise  is  become  a  very  sink  of  pollution  and  un- 
comeliness.  Damascus  has  plenty  of  clear,  pure 
water  in  it,  though,  and  this  is  enough,  of  itself,  to 
make  an  Arab  think  it  beautiful  and  blessed.  Water 
is  scarce  in  blistered  Syria.  We  run  railways  by 
our  large  cities  in  America;  in  Syria  they  curve  the 
roads  so  as  to  make  them  run  by  the  meager  little 
puddles  they  call  "fountains,"  and  which  are  not 
found  oftener  on  a  journey  than  every  four  hours 
But  the  "rivers"  of  Pharpar  and  Abana  of  Scrip- 
ture  (mere  creeks)  run  through  Damascus,  and  so 
every  house  and  every  garden  have  their  sparkling 
mountains  and  rivulets  of  water.     With  her  forest  oi 

178 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

foliage  and  her  abundance  of  water,  Damascus  must 
be  a  wonder  of  wonders  to  the  Bedouin  from  the 
deserts.  Damascus  is  simply  an  oasis — that  is  what 
it  is.  For  four  thousand  years  its  waters  have  not 
gone  dry  or  its  fertility  failed.  Now  we  can  under- 
stand why  the  city  has  existed  so  long.  It  could 
not  die.  So  long  as  its  waters  remain  to  it  away 
out  there  in  the  midst  of  that  howling  desert,  so 
long  will  Damascus  live  to  bless  the  sight  of  the 
tired  and  thirsty  wayfarer. 

Though  old  as  history  itself,  thou  art  fresh  as  the  breath  of 
spring,  blooming  as  thine  own  rose-bud,  and  fragrant  as  thine 
own  orange  flower,  O  Damascus,  pearl  of  the  East! 

Damascus  dates  back  anterior  to  the  days  of 
Abraham,  and  is  the  oldest  city  in  the  world.  It 
was  founded  by  Uz,  the  grandson  of  Noah.  "The 
early  history  of  Damascus  is  shrouded  in  the  mists 
of  a  hoary  antiquity."  Leave  the  matters  written  of 
in  the  first  eleven  chapters  of  the  Old  Testament 
out,  and  no  recorded  event  has  occurred  in  the  world 
but  Damascus  was  in  existence  to  receive  the  news 
of  it.  Go  back  as  far  as  you  will  into  the  vague 
past,  there  was  always  a  Damascus.  In  the  writings 
of  every  century  for  more  than  four  thousand  years, 
its  name  has  been  mentioned  and  its  praises  sung. 
To  Damascus,  years  are  only  moments,  decades  are 
only  flitting  trifles  of  time.  She  measures  time,  not 
by  days  and  months  and  years,  but  by  the  empires 
she  has  seen  rise  and  prosper  and  crumble  to  ruin. 
She  is  a  type  of  immortality.  She  saw  the  founda- 
tions of  Baalbec,  and  Thebes,  and  Ephesus  laid; 

179 


MARK    TWAIN 

she  saw  these  villages  grow  into  mighty  cities,  and 
amaze  the  world  with  their  grandeur — and  she  has 
lived  to  see  them  desolate,  deserted,  and  given  over 
to  the  owls  and  the  bats.  She  saw  the  Israelitish 
empire  exalted,  and  she  saw  it  annihilated.  She 
saw  Greece  rise,  and  flourish  two  thousand  years, 
and  die.  In  her  old  age  she  saw  Rome  built;  she 
saw  it  overshadow  the  world  with  its  power ;  she  saw 
it  perish.  The  few  hundreds  of  years  of  Genoese 
and  Venetian  might  and  splendor  were,  to  grave  old 
Damascus,  only  a  trifling  scintillation  hardly  worth 
remembering.  Damascus  has  seen  all  that  has  ever 
occurred  on  earth,  and  still  she  lives.  She  has 
looked  upon  the  dry  bones  of  a  thousand  empires, 
and  will  see  the  tombs  of  a  thousand  more  before 
she  dies.  Though  another  claims  the  name,  old 
Damascus  is  by  right  the  Eternal  City. 

We  reached  the  city  gates  just  at  sundown.  They 
do  say  that  one  can  get  into  any  walled  city  of 
Syria,  after  night,  for  bucksheesh,  except  Damascus. 
But  Damascus,  with  its  four  thousand  years  of  re- 
spectability in  the  world,  has  many  old  fogy  notions. 
There  are  no  street-lamps  there,  and  the  law  compels 
all  who  go  abroad  at  night  to  carry  lanterns,  just  as 
was  the  case  in  old  days,  when  heroes  and  heroines 
of  the  Arabian  Nights  walked  the  streets  of  Damas- 
cus, or  flew  away  toward  Bagdad  on  enchanted 
carpets. 

It  was  fairly  dark  a  few  minutes  after  we  got 
within  the  wall,  "and  we  rode  long  distances  through 
wonderfully  crooked  streets,  eight  to  ten  feet  wide, 
and  shut  in  on  either  side  by  the  high  mud-walls  of 

1 80 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  gardens.  At  last  we  got  to  where  lanterns 
could  be  seen  flitting  about  here  and  there,  and 
knew  we  were  in  the  midst  of  the  curious  old  city. 
In  a  little  narrow  street,  crowded  with  our  pack- 
mules  and  with  a  swarm  of  uncouth  Arabs,  we 
alighted,  and  through  a  kind  of  a  hole  in  the  wall 
entered  the  hotel.  We  stood  in  a  great  flagged 
court,  with  flowers  and  citron  trees  about  us,  and  a 
huge  tank  in  the  center  that  was  receiving  the  waters 
of  many  pipes.  We  crossed  the  court  and  entered 
the  rooms  prepared  to  receive  four  of  us.  In  a  large 
marble-paved  recess  between  the  two  rooms  was  a 
tank  of  clear,  cool  water,  which  was  kept  running 
over  all  the  time  by  the  streams  that  were  pouring 
into  it  from  half  a  dozen  pipes.  Nothing  in  this 
scorching,  desolate  land  could  look  so  refreshing  as 
this  pure  water  flashing  in  the  lamplight;  nothing 
could  look  so  beautiful,  nothing  could  sound  so 
delicious  as  this  mimic  rain  to  ears  long  unaccus- 
tomed to  sounds  of  such  a  nature.  Our  rooms  were 
large,  comfortably  furnished,  and  even  had  their 
floors  clothed  with  soft,  cheerful-tinted  carpets.  It 
was  a  pleasant  thing  to  see  a  carpet  again,  for  if 
there  is  anything  drearier  than  the  tomblike,  stone- 
paved  parlors  and  bedrooms  of  Europe  and  Asia,  I 
do  not  know  what  it  is.  They  make  one  think  of 
the  grave  all  the  time.  A  very  broad,  gaily  capari- 
soned divan,  some  twelve  or  fourteen  feet  long,  ex- 
tended across  one  side  of  each  room,  and  opposite 
were  single  beds  with  spring  mattresses.  There  were 
great  looking-glasses  and  marble-top  tables.  AH 
this  luxurv  was  as  grateful  to  systems  and  senses 

181 


MARK    TWAIN 

worn  out  with  an  exhausting  day's  travel,  as  it  was 
unexpected — for  one  cannot  tell  what  to  expect  in 
a  Turkish  city  of  even  a  quarter  of  a  million  inhab- 
itants. 

I  do  not  know,  but  I  think  they  used  that  tank 
between  the  rooms  to  draw  drinking-water  from; 
that  did  not  occur  to  me,  however,  until  I  had 
dipped  my  baking  head  far  down  into  its  cool 
depths.  I  thought  of  it  then,  and,  superb  as  the 
bath  was,  I  was  sorry  I  had  taken  it,  and  was  about 
to  go  and  explain  to  the  landlord.  But  a  finely 
curled  and  scented  poodle  dog  frisked  up  and  nipped 
the  calf  of  my  leg  just  then,  and  before  I  had  time 
to  think  I  had  soused  him  to  the  bottom  of  the  tank, 
and  when  I  saw  a  servant  'coming  with  a  pitcher  I 
went  off  and  left  the  pup  trying  to  climb  out  and  not 
succeeding  very  well.  Satisfied  revenge  was  all  I 
needed  to  make  me  perfectly  happy,  and  when  I 
walked  in  to  supper  that  first  night  in  Damascus  I 
was  in  that  condition.  We  lay  on  those  divans 
a  long  time,  after  supper,  smoking  narghilis  and 
long-stemmed  chibouks,  and  talking  about  the 
dreadful  ride  of  the  day,  and  I  knew  then  what  I 
had  sometimes  known  before — that  it  is  worth  while 
to  get  tired  out,  because  one  so  enjoys  resting  after- 
ward. 

In  the  morning  we  sent  for  donkeys.  It  is  worthy 
of  note  that  we  had  to  send  for  these  things.  I  said 
Damascus  was  an  old  fossil,  and  she  is.  Anywhere 
else  we  would  have  been  assailed  by  a  clamorous 
army  of  donkey-drivers,  guides,  peddlers,  and  beg- 
gars— but  in  Damascus  they  so  hate  the  very  sight 

x8s 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

of  a  foreign  Christian  that  they  want  no  intercourse 
whatever  with  him;  only  a  year  or  two  ago,  his 
person  was  not  always  safe  in  Damascus  streets.  It 
is  the  most  fanatical  Mohammedan  purgatory  out  of 
Arabia.  Where  you  see  one  green  turban  of  a  Hadji 
elsewhere  (the  honored  sign  that  my  lord  has  made 
the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca),  I  think  you  will  see  a 
dozen  in  Damascus.  The  Damascenes  are  the  ugli- 
est, wickedest  looking  villains  we  have  seen.  All 
the  veiled  women  we  had  seen  yet,  nearly,  left  their 
eyes  exposed,  but  numbers  of  these  in  Damascus 
completely  hid  the  face  under  a  close-drawn  black 
veil  that  made  the  woman  look  like  a  mummy.  If 
ever  we  caught  an  eye  exposed  it  was  quickly  hidden 
from  our  contaminating  Christian  vision ;  the  beggars 
actually  passed  us  by  without  demanding  buck- 
cheesh;  the  merchants  in  the  bazars  did  not  hold 
up  their  goods  and  cry  out  eagerly,  "Hey,  John!" 
or  "Look  this,  Howajji!"  On  the  contrary,  they 
only  scowled  at  us  and  said  never  a  word. 

The  narrow  streets  swarmed  like  a  hive  with  men 
and  women  in  strange  Oriental  costumes,  and  our 
small  donkeys  knocked  them  right  and  left  as  we 
plowed  through  them,  urged  on  by  the  merciless 
donkey-boys.  These  persecutors  run  after  the  ani- 
mals, shouting  and  goading  them  for  hours  together ; 
they  keep  the  donkey  in  a  gallop  always,  yet  never 
get  tired  themselves  or  fall  behind.  The  donkeys 
fell  down  and  spilt  us  over  their  heads  occasionally, 
but  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  mount  and  hurry 
on  again.  We  were  banged  against  sharp  corners, 
loaded  porters,  camels,  and  citizens  generally;   and 

181 


MARK    TWAIN 

we  were  so  taken  up  with  looking  out  for  collisions 
and  casualties  that  we  had  no  chance  to  look  about 
us  at  all.  We  rode  half  through  the  city  and  through 
the  famous  "street  which  is  called  Straight"  with- 
out seeing  anything,  hardly.  Our  bones  were  nearly 
knocked  out  of  joint,  we  were  wild  with  excitement, 
and  our  sides  ached  with  the  jolting  we  had  suffered. 
I  do  not  like  riding  in  the  Damascus  street-cars. 

We  were  on  our  way  to  the  reputed  houses  of 
Judas  and  Ananias.  About  eighteen  or  nineteen 
hundred  years  ago,  Saul,  a  native  of  Tarsus,  was 
particularly  bitter  against  the  new  sect  called  Chris- 
tians, and  he  left  Jerusalem  and  started  across  the 
country  on  a  furious  crusade  against  them.  He 
went  forth  "breathing  threatenings  and  slaughter 
against  the  disciples  of  the  Lord." 

And  as  he  journeyed,  he  came  near  Damascus,  and  suddenly 
there  shined  round  about  him  a  light  from  heaven: 

And  he  fell  to  the  earth  and  heard  a  voice  saying  unto  him, 
Saul,  Saul,  why  persecutest  thou  me? 

And  when  he  knew  that  it  was  Jesus  that  spoke  to  him  he 
trembled,  and  was  astonished,  and  said,  Lord,  what  wilt  thou 
have  me  to  do? 

He  was  told  to  arise  and  go  into  the  ancient  city 
and  one  would  tell  him  what  to  do.  In  the  mean 
time  his  soldiers  stood  speechless  and  awe-stricken, 
for  they  heard  the  mysterious  voice  but  saw  no  man. 
Saul  rose  up  and  found  that  that  fierce  supernatural 
light  had  destroyed  his  sight,  and  he  was  blind,  so 
"they  led  him  by  the  hand  and  brought  him  to 
Damascus."     He  was  converted. 

Paul  lay  three  days  blind,  in  the  house  of  Judas, 
and  during  that  time  he  neither  ate  nor  drank. 

184 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

There  came  a  voice  to  a  citizen  of  Damascus, 
named  Ananias,  saying,  "Arise,  and  go  into  the 
street  which  is  called  Straight,  and  inquire  at  the 
house  of  Judas,  for  one  called  Saul,  of  Tarsus;  for 
behold,  he  prayeth." 

Ananias  did  not  wish  to  go  at  first,  for  he  had 
heard  of  Saul  before,  and  he  had  his  doubts  about 
that  style  of  a  "chosen  vessel"  to  preach  the  gos- 
pel of  peace.  However,  in  obedience  to  orders,  he 
went  into  the  "street  called  Straight"  (how  he  ever 
found  his  way  into  it,  and  after  he  did,  how  he  ever 
found  his  way  out  of  it  again,  are  mysteries  only  to 
be  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  he  was  acting  under 
Divine  inspiration).  He  found  Paul  and  restored 
him,  and  ordained  him  a  preacher;  and  from  this 
old  house  we  had  hunted  up  in  the  street  which  is 
miscalled  Straight,  he  had  started  out  on  that  bold 
missionary  career  which  he  prosecuted  till  his  death. 

It  was  not  the  house  of  the  disciple  who  sold  the 
Master  for  thirty  pieces  of  silver.  I  make  this  ex- 
planation in  justice  to  Judas,  who  was  a  far  different 
sort  of  man  from  the  person  just  referred  to.  A 
very  different  style  of  man,  and  lived  in  a  very  good 
house.     It  is  a  pity  we  do  not  know  more  about  him. 

I  have  given,  in  the  above  paragraphs,  some  more 
information  for  people  who  will  not  read  Bible 
history  until  they  are  defrauded  into  it  by  some 
such  method  as  this.  I  hope  that  no  friend  of 
progress  and  education  will  obstruct  or  interfere 
with  my  peculiar  mission. 

The  street  called  Straight  is  straighter  than  a  cork- 
screw, but  not  as  straight  as  a  rainbow.     St.  Luke 

185 


MARK    TWAIN 

is  careful  not  to  commit  himself;  he  does  not  say  it 
is  the  street  which  is  straight,  but  the  "street  which 
is  called  Straight."  It  is  a  fine  piece  of  irony;  it 
is  the  only  facetious  remark  in  the  Bible,  I  believe. 
We  traversed  the  street  called  Straight  a  good  way, 
and  then  turned  off  and  called  at  the  reputed  house 
of  Ananias.  There  is  small  question  that  a  part  of 
the  original  house  is  there  still;  it  is  an  old  room 
twelve  or  fifteen  feet  underground,  and  its  masonry 
is  evidently  ancient.  If  Ananias  did  not  live  there 
in  St.  Paul's  time,  somebody  else  did,  which  is  just 
as  well.  I  took  a  drink  out  of  Ananias' s  well,  and, 
singularly  enough,  the  water  was  just  as  fresh  as  if 
the  well  had  been  dug  yesterday. 

We  went  out  toward  the  north  end  of  the  city  to 
see  the  place  where  the  disciples  let  Paul  down  over 
the  Damascus  wall  at  dead  of  night — for  he  preached 
Christ  so  fearlessly  in  Damascus  that  the  people 
sought  to  kill  him,  just  as  they  would  to-day  for  the 
same  offense,  and  he  had  to  escape  and  flee  to 
Jerusalem. 

Then  we  called  at  the  tomb  of  Mohammed's  chil- 
dren and  at  a  tomb  which  purported  to  be  that  of  St. 
George  who  killed  the  dragon,  and  so  on  out  to  the 
hollow  place  under  a  rock  where  Paul  hid  during  his 
flight  till  his  pursuers  gave  him  up;  and  up  to  the 
mausoleum  of  the  five  thousand  Christians  who  were 
massacred  in  Damascus  in  1861  by  the  Turks.  They 
say  those  narrow  streets  ran  blood  for  several  days, 
and  that  men,  women,  and  children  were  butchered 
indiscriminately  and  left  to  rot  by  hundreds  all 
through  the  Christian  quarter;    they  say,  further, 

186 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

that  the  stench  was  dreadful.  All  the  Christians 
who  could  get  away  fled  from  the  city,  and  the 
Mohammedans  would  not  defile  their  hands  by  bury- 
ing the  "infidel  dogs."  The  thirst  for  blood  ex- 
tended to  the  high  lands  of  Hermon  and  An ti- Leba- 
non, and  in  a  short  time  twenty-five  thousand  more 
Christians  were  massacred  and  their  possessions  laid 
waste.  How  they  hate  a  Christian  in  Damascus! — 
and  pretty  much  all  over  Turkey dom  as  well.  And 
how  they  will  pay  for  it  when  Russia  turns  her  guns 
upon  them  again! 

It  is  soothing  to  the  heart  to  abuse  England  and 
France  for  interposing  to  save  the  Ottoman  Empire 
from  the  destruction  it  has  so  richly  deserved  for  a 
thousand  years.  It  hurts  my  vanity  to  see  these 
pagans  refuse  to  eat  of  food  that  has  been  cooked 
for  us;  or  to  eat  from  a  dish  we  have  eaten  from; 
or  to  drink  from  a  goatskin  which  we  have  polluted 
with  our  Christian  lips,  except  by  filtering  the  water 
through  a  rag  which  they  put  over  the  mouth  of  it 
or  through  a  sponge!  I  never  disliked  a  Chinaman 
as  I  do  these  degraded  Turks  and  Arabs,  and,  when 
Russia  is  ready  to  war  with  them  again,  I  hope  Eng- 
land and  France  will  not  find  it  good  breeding  or 
good  judgment  to  interfere. 

In  Damascus  they  think  there  are  no  such  rivers 
in  all  the  world  as  their  little  Abana  and  Pharpar. 
The  Damascenes  have  always  thought  that  way. 
In  II  Kings,  chapter  v,  Naaman  boasts  extravagantly 
about  them.  That  was  three  thousand  years  ago. 
He  says:  "Are  not  Abana  and  Pharpar,  rivers  of 
Damascus,  better  than  all  the  waters  of  Israel  ?  May 

187 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  not  wash  in  them  and  be  clean?"  But  some  of 
my  readers  have  forgotten  who  Naaman  was,  long 
ago.  Naaman  was  the  commander  of  the  Syrian 
armies.  He  was  the  favorite  of  the  king  and  lived 
in  great  state.  "He  was  a  mighty  man  of  valor, 
but  he  was  a  leper."  Strangely  enough,  the  house 
they  point  out  to  you  now  as  his  has  been  turned 
into  a  leper  hospital,  and  the  inmates  expose  their 
horrid  deformities  and  hold  up  their  hands  and  beg 
for  bucksheesh  when  a  stranger  enters. 

One  cannot  appreciate  the  horror  of  this  disease 
until  he  looks  upon  it  in  all  its  ghastliness  in  Naa- 
man's  ancient  dwelling  in  Damascus.  Bones  all 
twisted  out  of  shape,  great  knots  protruding  from 
face  and  body,  joints  decaying  and  dropping  away 
— horrible! 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  last  twenty-four  hours  we  stayed  in  Damas- 
cus I  lay  prostrate  with  a  violent  attack  of 
cholera,  or  cholera  morbus,  and  therefore  had  a 
good  chance  and  a  good  excuse  to  lie  there  on  that 
wide  divan  and  take  an  honest  rest.  I  had  nothing 
to  do  but  listen  to  the  pattering  of  the  fountains  and 
take  medicine  and  throw  it  up  again.  It  was  dan- 
gerous recreation,  but  it  was  pleasanter  than  trav- 
eling in  Syria.  I  had  plenty  of  snow  from  Mount 
Hermon,  and,  as  it  would  not  stay  on  my  stomach, 
there  was  nothing  to  interfere  with  my  eating  it — 
there  was  always  room  for  more.  I  enjoyed  myself 
very  well.  Syrian  travel  has  its  interesting  features, 
like  travel  in  any  other  part  of  the  world,  and  yet  to 
break  your  leg  or  have  the  cholera  adds  a  welcome 
variety  to  it. 

We  left  Damascus  at  noon  and  rode  across  the 
plain  a  couple  of  hours,  and  then  the  party  stopped 
awhile  in  the  shade  of  some  fig  trees  to  give  me  a 
chance  to  rest.  It  was  the  hottest  day  we  had  seen 
yet — the  sun-flames  shot  down  like  the  shafts  of  fire 
that  stream  out  before  a  blowpipe;  the  rays  seemed 
to  fall  in  a  steady  deluge  on  the  head  and  pass  down- 
ward like  rain  from  a  roof.  I  imagined  I  could  dis- 
tinguish between  the  floods  of  rays — I  thought  I 

189 


MARK    TWAIN 

could  tell  when  each  flood  struck  my  head,  when  it 
reached  my  shoulders,  and  when  the  next  one  came. 
It  was  terrible.  All  the  desert  glared  so  fiercely 
that  my  eyes  were  swimming  in  tears  all  the  time. 
The  boys  had  white  umbrellas  heavily  lined  with 
dark  green.  They  were  a  priceless  blessing.  I 
thanked  fortune  that  I  had  one,  too,  notwithstanding 
it  was  packed  up  with  the  baggage  and  was  ten  miles 
ahead.  It  is  madness  to  travel  in  Syria  without  an 
umbrella.  They  told  me  in  Beirout  (these  people 
who  always  gorge  you  with  advice)  that  it  was  mad- 
ness to  travel  in  Syria  without  an  umbrella.  It  was 
on  this  account  that  I  got  one. 

But,  honestly,  I  think  an  umbrella  is  a  nuisance 
anywhere  when  its  business  is  to  keep  the  sun  off. 
No  Arab  wears  a  brim  to  his  fez,  or  uses  an  umbrella, 
or  anything  to  shade  his  eyes  or  his  face,  and  he  al- 
ways looks  comfortable  and  proper  in  the  sun.  But 
of  all  the  ridiculous  sights  I  ever  have  seen,  our 
party  of  eight  is  the  most  so — they  do  cut  such  an 
outlandish  figure.  They  travel  single  file;  they  all 
wear  the  endless  white  rag  of  Constantinople  wrapped 
round  and  round  their  hats  and  dangling  down  their 
backs;  they  all  wear  thick  green  spectacles,  with 
side-glasses  to  them;  they  all  hold  white  umbrellas, 
lined  with  green,  over  their  heads;  without  excep- 
tion their  stirrups  are  too  short — they  are  the  very 
worst  gang  of  horsemen  on  earth;  their  animals  to 
a  horse  trot  fearfully  hard — and  when  they  get 
strung  out  one  after  the  other,  glaring  straight  ahead 
and  breathless;  bouncing  high  and  out  of  turn,  all 
along  the  line;  knees  well  up  and  stiff,  elbows  flap- 

190 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ping  like  a  rooster's  that  is  going  to  crow,  and  the 
long  file  of  umbrellas  popping  convulsively  up  and 
down — when  one  sees  this  outrageous  picture  ex- 
posed to  the  light  of  day,  he  is  amazed  that  the  gods 
don't  get  out  their  thunderbolts  and  destroy  them 
off  the  face  of  the  earth!  I  do — I  wonder  at  it.  I 
wouldn't  let  any  such  caravan  go  through  a  country 
of  mine. 

And  when  the  sun  drops  below  the  horizon  and 
the  boys  close  their  umbrellas  and  put  them  under 
their  arms,  it  is  only  a  variation  of  the  picture,  not 
a  modification  of  its  absurdity. 

But  maybe  you  cannot  see  the  wild  extravagance 
of  my  panorama.  You  could  if  you  were  here. 
Here,  you  feel  all  the  time  just  as  if  you  were  living 
about  the  year  1200  before  Christ — or  back  to  the 
patriarchs — or  forward  to  the  New  Era.  The 
scenery  of  the  Bible  is  about  you — the  customs  of 
the  patriarchs  are  around  you — the  same  people,  in 
the  same  flowing  robes,  and  in  sandals,  cross  your 
path — the  same  long  trains  of  stately  camels  go  and 
come — the  same  impressive  religious  solemnity  and 
silence  rest  upon  the  desert  and  the  mountains  that 
were  upon  them  in  the  remote  ages  of  antiquity,  and 
behold,  intruding  upon  a  scene  like  this,  comes  this 
fantastic  mob  of  green-spectacled  Yanks,  with  their 
flapping  elbows  and  bobbing  umbrellas!  It  is 
Daniel  in  the  lion's  den  with  a  green  cotton  umbrella 
under  his  arm,  all  over  again. 

My  umbrella  is  with  the  baggage,  and  so  are  my 
green  spectacles — and  there  they  shall  stay.  I  will 
not  use  them.     I  will  show  some  respect  for  the 

191 


MARK    TWAIN 

eternal  fitness  of  things.  It  will  be  bad  enough  to 
get  sunstruck,  without  looking  ridiculous  into  the 
bargain.  If  I  fall,  let  me  fall  bearing  about  me  the 
semblance  of  a  Christian,  at  least. 

Three  or  four  hours  out  from  Damascus  we  passed 
the  spot  where  Saul  was  so  abruptly  converted,  and 
from  this  place  we  looked  back  over  the  scorching 
desert,  and  had  our  last  glimpse  of  beautiful  Damas- 
cus, decked  in  its  robes  of  shining  green.  After 
nightfall  we  reached  our  tents,  just  outside  of  the 
nasty  Arab  village  of  Jonesborough.  Of  course  the 
real  name  of  the  place  is  El  something  or  other,  but 
the  boys  still  refuse  to  recognize  the  Arab  names  or 
try  to  pronounce  them.  When  I  say  that  that  village 
is  of  the  usual  style,  I  mean  to  insinuate  that  all 
Syrian  villages  within  fifty  miles  of  Damascus  are 
alike — so  much  alike  that  it  would  require  more 
than  human  intelligence  to  tell  wherein  one  differed 
from  another.  A  Syrian  village  is  a  hive  of  huts 
one  story  high  (the  height  of  a  man),  and  as  square 
as  a  dry -goods  box ;  it  is  mud-plastered  all  over,  flat 
roof  and  all,  and  generally  whitewashed  after  a  fash- 
ion. The  same  roof  often  extends  over  half  the 
town,  covering  many  of  the  streets,  which  are  gener- 
ally about  a  yard  wide.  When  you  ride  through  one 
of  these  villages  at  noonday,  you  first  meet  a  melan- 
choly dog,  that  looks  up  at  you  and  silently  begs  that 
you  won't  run  over  him,  but  he  does  not  offer  to  get 
out  of  the  way;  next  you  meet  a  young  boy  without 
any  clothes  on,  and  he  holds  out  his  hand  and  says 
"  Bucksheesh !" — he  don't  really  expect  a  cent,  but 
then  he  learned  to  say  that  before  he  learned  to  say 

102 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

mother,  and  now  he  cannot  break  himself  of  it ;  next 
you  meet  a  woman  with  a  black  veil  drawn  closely 
over  her  face,  and  her  bust  exposed;  finally,  you 
come  to  several  sore-eyed  children  and  children  in 
all  stages  of  mutilation  and  decay;  and  sitting 
humbly  in  the  dust,  and  all  fringed  with  filthy 
rags,  is  a  poor  devil  whose  arms  and  legs  are  gnarled 
and  twisted  like  grape  vines.  These  are  all  the  peo- 
ple you  are  likely  to  see.  The  balance  of  the  popu- 
lation are  asleep  within  doors,  or  abroad  tending 
goats  in  the  plains  and  on  the  hillsides.  The  vil- 
lage is  built  on  some  consumptive  little  watercourse, 
and  about  it  is  a  little  fresh-looking  vegetation.  Be- 
yong  this  charmed  circle,  for  miles  on  every  side, 
stretches  a  weary  desert  of  sand  and  gravel,  which 
produces  a  gray  bunchy  shrub  like  sage-brush.  A 
Syrian  village  is  the  sorriest  sight  in  the  world,  and 
its  surroundings  are  eminently  in  keeping  with  it. 

I  would  not  have  gone  into  this  dissertation  upon 
Syrian  villages  but  for  the  fact  that  Nimrod,  the 
Mighty  Hunter  of  Scriptural  notoriety,  is  buried  in 
Jonesborough,  and  I  wished  the  public  to  know 
about  how  he  is  located.  Like  Homer,  he  is  said 
to  be  buried  in  many  other  places,  but  this  is  the 
only  true  and  genuine  place  his  ashes  inhabit. 

When  the  original  tribes  were  dispersed,  more  than 
four  thousand  years  ago,  Nimrod  and  a  large  party 
traveled  three  or  four  hundred  miles,  and  settled 
where  the  great  city  of  Babylon  afterward  stood. 
Nimrod  built  that  city.  He  also  began  to  build  the 
famous  Tower  of  Babel,  but  circumstances  over 
which  he  had  no  control  put  it  out  of  his  power  to 

193 


MARK    TWAIN 

finish  it.  He  ran  it  up  eight  stories  high,  however, 
and  two  of  them  still  stand  at  this  day,  a  colossal 
mass  of  brickwork,  rent  down  the  center  by  earth- 
quakes, and  seared  and  vitrified  by  the  lightnings  of 
an  angry  God.  But  the  vast  ruin  will  still  stand  for 
ages,  to  shame  the  puny  labors  of  these  modern 
generations  of  men.  Its  huge  compartments  are 
tenanted  by  owls  and  lions,  and  old  Nimrod  lies 
neglected  in  this  wretched  village,  far  from  the  scene 
of  his  grand  enterprise. 

We  left  Jonesborough  very  early  in  the  morning, 
and  rode  forever  and  forever  and  forever,  it  seemed 
to  me,  over  parched  deserts  and  rocky  hills,  hungry, 
and  with  no  water  to  drink.  We  had  drained  the 
goatskins  dry  in  a  little  while.  At  noon  we  halted 
before  the  wretched  Arab  town  of  El  Yuba  Dam, 
perched  on  the  side  of  a  mountain,  but  the  dragoman 
said  if  we  applied  there  for  water  we  would  be  at- 
tacked by  the  whole  tribe,  for  they  did  not  love 
Christians.  We  had  to  journey  on.  Two  hours  later 
we  reached  the  foot  of  a  tall  isolated  mountain,  which 
is  crowned  by  the  crumbling  castle  of  Banias,  the 
stateliest  ruin  of  that  kind  on  earth,  no  doubt.  It 
is  a  thousand  feet  long  and  two  hundred  wide,  all 
of  the  most  symmetrical,  and  at  the  same  time  the 
most  ponderous,  masonry.  The  massive  towers  and 
bastions  are  more  than  thirty  feet  high,  and  have 
been  sixty.  From  the  mountain's  peak  its  broken 
turrets  rise  above  the  groves  of  ancient  oaks  and 
olives,  and  look  wonderfully  picturesque.  It  is  of 
such  high  antiquity  that  no  man  knows  who  built 
it  or  when  it  was  built.     It  is  utterly  inaccessible 

104. 


THE    INNOCENTS  ABROAD 

except  in  one  place,  where  a  bridle-path  winds  up- 
ward among  the  solid  rocks  to  the  old  portcullis. 
The  horses'  hoofs  have  bored  holes  in  these  rocks 
to  the  depth  of  six  inches  during  the  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  years  that  the  castle  was  garrisoned. 
We  wandered  for  three  hours  among  the  chambers 
and  crypts  and  dungeons  of  the  fortress,  and  trod 
where  the  mailed  heels  of  many  a  knightly  Crusader 
had  rung,  and  where  Phoenician  heroes  had  walked 
ages  before  them. 

We  wondered  how  such  a  solid  mass  of  masonry 
could  be  affected  even  by  an  earthquake,  and  could 
not  understand  what  agency  had  made  Banias  a  ruin; 
but  we  found  the  destroyer,  after  a  while,  and  then 
our  wonder  was  increased  tenfold.  Seeds  had  fallen 
in  crevices  in  the  vast  walls;  the  seeds  had  sprouted; 
the  tender,  insignificant  sprouts  had  hardened;  they 
grew  larger  and  larger,  and  by  a  steady,  impercepti- 
ble pressure  forced  the  great  stones  apart,  and  now 
are  bringing  sure  destruction  upon  a  giant  work  that 
has  even  mocked  the  earthquakes  to  scorn !  Gnarled 
and  twisted  trees  spring  from  the  old  walls  every- 
where, and  beautify  and  overshadow  the  gray  battle- 
ments with  a  wild  luxuriance  of  foliage. 

From  these  old  towers  we  looked  down  upon  a 
broad,  far-reaching  green  plain,  glittering  with  the 
pools  and  rivulets  which  are  the  sources  of  the  sacred 
river  Jordan.  It  was  a  grateful  vision,  after  so  much 
desert. 

And  as  the  evening  drew  near,  we  clambered  down 
the  mountain,  through  groves  of  the  Biblical  oaks  of 
Bashan  (for  we  were  just  stepping  over  the  border 

iQS 


MARK     TWAIN 

and  entering  the  long-sought  Holy  Land),  and  at  its 
extreme  foot,  toward  the  wide  valley,  we  entered  this 
littJe  execrable  village  of  Banias  and  camped  in  a 
great  grove  of  olive  trees  near  a  torrent  of  sparkling 
water  whose  banks  are  arrayed  in  fig  trees,  pome- 
granates, and  oleanders  in  full  leaf.  Barring  the 
proximity  of  the  village,  it  is  a  sort  of  paradise. 

The  very  first  thing  one  feels  like  doing  when  he 
gets  into  camp,  all  burning  up  and  dusty,  is  to  hunt 
up  a  bath.  We  followed  the  stream  up  to  where  it 
gushes  out  of  the  mountainside,  three  hundred  yards 
from  the  tents,  and  took  a  bath  that  was  so  icy  that 
if  I  did  not  know  this  was  the  main  source  of  the 
sacred  river,  I  would  expect  harm  to  come  of  it.  It 
was  bathing  at  noonday  in  the  chilly  source  of  the 
Abana,  "River  of  Damascus,"  that  gave  me  the 
cholera,  so  Dr.  B.  said.  However,  it  generally  does 
give  me  the  cholera  to  take  a  bath. 

The  incorrigible  pilgrims  have  come  in  with  their 
pockets  full  of  specimens  broken  from  the  ruins.  I 
wish  this  vandalism  could  be  stopped.  They  broke 
off  fragments  from  Noah's  tomb ;  from  the  exquisite 
sculptures  of  the  temples  of  Baalbec;  from  the 
houses  of  Judas  and  Ananias,  in  Damascus;  from 
the  tomb  of  Nimrod  the  Mighty  Hunter  in  Jones- 
borough;  from  the  worn  Greek  and  Roman  inscrip- 
tions set  in  the  hoary  walls  of  the  castle  of  Banias; 
and  now  they  have  been  hacking  and  chipping  these 
old  arches  here  that  Jesus  looked  upon  in  the  flesh. 
Heaven  protect  the  Sepulcher  when  this  tribe  in- 
vades Jerusalem! 

The  ruins  here  are  not  very  interesting.     There 

196 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

are  the  massive  walls  of  a  great  square  building  that 
was  once  the  citadel;  there  are  many  ponderous  old 
arches  that  are  so  smothered  with  debris  that  they 
barely  project  above  the  ground;  there  are  heavy 
walled  sewers  through  which  the  crystal  brook  of 
which  Jordan  is  born  still  runs;  in  the  hillside  are 
the  substructions  of  a  costly  marble  temple  that 
Herod  the  Great  built  here — patches  of  its  handsome 
mosaic  floors  still  remain ;  there  is  a  quaint  old  stone 
bridge  that  was  here  before  Herod's  time,  maybe; 
scattered  everywhere,  in  the  paths  and  in  the  woods, 
are  Corinthian  capitals,  broken  porphyry  pillars,  and 
little  fragments  of  sculpture;  and  up  yonder  in  the 
precipice  where  the  fountain  gushes  out,  are  well- 
worn  Greek  inscriptions  over  niches  in  the  rock 
where  in  ancient  times  the  Greeks,  and  after  them 
the  Romans,  worshiped  the  sylvan  god  Pan.  But 
trees  and  bushes  grow  above  many  of  these  ruins 
now;  the  miserable  huts  of  a  little  crew  of  filthy 
Arabs  are  perched  upon  the  broken  masonry  of 
antiquity,  the  whole  place  has  a  sleepy,  stupid,  rural 
look  about  it,  and  one  can  hardly  bring  himself  to 
believe  that  a  busy,  substantially  built  city  once 
existed  here,  even  two  thousand  years  ago.  The 
place  was  nevertheless  the  scene  of  an  event  whose 
effects  have  added  page  after  page  and  volume  after 
volume  to  the  world's  history.  For  in  this  place 
Christ  stood  when  He  said  to  Peter: 

Thou  art  Peter;  and  upon  this  rock  will  I  build  my  church, 
and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it.  And  I  will 
give  unto  thee  the  keys  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven;  and  what- 
soever thou  shalt  bind  on  earth  shall  be  bound  in  heaven,  and 
whatsoever  thou  shalt  loose  on  earth  shall  be  loosed  in  heaven. 

197 


MARK    TWAIN 

On  these  little  sentences  have  been  built  up  the 
mighty  edifice  of  the  Church  of  Rome;  in  them  lie 
the  authority  for  the  imperial  power  of  the  Popes 
over  temporal  affairs,  and  their  godlike  power  to 
curse  a  soul  or  wash  it  white  from  sin.  To  sustain 
the  position  of  "the  only  true  Church,"  which  Rome 
claims  was  thus  conferred  upon  her,  she  has  fought 
and  labored  and  struggled  for  many  a  century,  and 
will  continue  to  keep  herself  busy  in  the  same  work 
to  the  end  of  time.  The  memorable  words  I  have 
quoted  give  to  this  ruined  city  about  all  the  interest 
it  possesses  to  people  of  the  present  day. 

It  seems  curious  enough  to  us  to  be  standing  on 
ground  that  was  once  actually  pressed  by  the  feet  of 
the  Saviour.  The  situation  is  suggestive  of  a  reality 
and  a  tangibility  that  seem  at  variance  with  the 
vagueness  and  mystery  and  ghostliness  that  one 
naturally  attaches  to  the  character  of  a  god.  I 
cannot  comprehend  yet  that  I  am  sitting  where  a 
god  has  stood,  and  looking  upon  the  brook  and  the 
mountains  which  that  god  looked  upon,  and  am 
surrounded  by  dusky  men  and  women  whose  an- 
cestors saw  him,  and  even  talked  with  him,  face  to 
face,  and  carelessly,  just  as  they  would  have  done 
with  any  other  stranger.  I  cannot  comprehend  this; 
the  gods  of  my  understanding  have  been  always 
hidden  in  clouds  and  very  far  away. 

This  morning,  during  breakfast,  the  usual  assem- 
blage of  squalid  humanity  sat  patiently  without  the 
charmed  circle  of  the  camp  and  waited  for  such 
crumbs  as  pity  might  bestow  upon  their  misery. 
There  were  old  and  young,  brown-skinned  and  yel- 

tq8 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

low.  Some  of  the  men  were  tall  and  stalwart  (for 
one  hardly  sees  anywhere  such  splendid-looking  men 
as  here  in  the  East),  but  all  the  women  and  children 
looked  worn  and  sad,  and  distressed  with  hunger. 
They  reminded  me  much  of  Indians,  did  these  peo- 
ple. They  had  but  little  clothing,  but  such  as  they 
had  was  fanciful  in  character  and  fantastic  in  its 
arrangement.  Any  little  absurd  gewgaw  or  gim- 
crack  they  had  they  disposed  in  such  a  way  as  to 
make  it  attract  attention  most  readily.  They  sat  in 
silence,  and  with  tireless  patience  watched  our  every 
motion  with  that  vile,  uncomplaining  impoliteness 
which  is  so  truly  Indian,  and  which  makes  a  white 
man  so  nervous  and  uncomfortable  and  savage  that 
he  wants  to  exterminate  the  whole  tribe. 

These  people  about  us  had  other  peculiarities, 
which  I  have  noticed  in  the  noble  red  man,  too: 
they  were  infested  with  vermin,  and  the  dirt  had 
caked  on  them  till  it  amounted  to  bark. 

The  little  children  were  in  a  pitiable  condition — 
they  all  had  sore  eyes,  and  were  otherwise  afflicted 
in  various  ways.  They  say  that  hardly  a  native  child 
in  all  the  East  is  free  from  sore  eyes,  and  that  thou- 
sands of  them  go  blind  of  one  eye  or  both  every 
year.  I  think  this  must  be  so,  for  I  see  plenty  of 
blind  people  every  day,  and  I  do  not  remember  see- 
ing any  children  that  hadn't  sore  eyes.  And,  would 
you  suppose  that  an  American  mother  could  sit  for 
an  hour,  with  her  child  in  her  arms,  and  let  a  hun- 
dred flies  roost  upon  its  eyes  all  that  time  undis- 
turbed? I  see  that  every  day.  It  makes  my  flesh 
creep.    Yesterday  we  met  a  woman  riding  on  a  little 

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MARK    TWAIN 

jackass,  and  she  had  a  little  child  in  her  arms; 
honestly,  I  thought  the  child  had  goggles  on  as  we 
approached,  and  I  wondered  how  its  mother  could 
afford  so  much  style.  But  when  we  drew  near,  we 
saw  that  the  goggles  were  nothing  but  a  camp-meet- 
ing of  flies  assembled  around  each  of  the  child's  eyes, 
and  at  the  same  time  there  was  a  detachment  pros- 
pecting its  nose.  The  flies  were  happy,  the  child 
was  contented,  and  so  the  mother  did  not  interfere. 
As  soon  as  the  tribe  found  out  that  we  had  a 
doctor  in  our  party,  they  began  to  flock  in  from  all 
quarters.  Dr.  B.,  in  the  charity  of  his  nature,  had 
taken  a  child  from  a  woman  who  sat  near  by,  and 
put  some  sort  of  a  wash  upon  its  diseased  eyes. 
That  woman  went  off  and  started  the  whole  nation, 
and  it  was  a  sight  to  see  them  swarm!  The  lame, 
the  halt,  the  blind,  the  leprous — all  the  distempers 
that  are  bred  of  indolence,  dirt,  and  iniquity — were 
represented  in  the  congress  in  ten  minutes,  and  still 
they  came!  Every  woman  that  had  a  sick  baby 
brought  it  along,  and  every  woman  that  hadn't 
borrowed  one.  What  reverent  and  what  worshiping 
looks  they  bent  upon  that  dread,  mysterious  power, 
the  Doctor !  They  watched  him  take  his  vials  out ; 
they  watched  him  measure  the  particles  of  white 
powder ;  they  watched  him  add  drops  of  one  precious 
liquid,  and  drops  of  another;  they  lost  not  the 
slightest  movement;  their  eyes  were  riveted  upon 
him  with  a  fascination  that  nothing  could  distract. 
I  believe  they  thought  he  was  gifted  like  a  god. 
When  each  individual  got  his  portion  of  medicine, 
his  eyes  were  radiant  with  joy — notwithstanding  by 

200 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

nature  they  are  a  thankless  and  impassive  race — 
and  upon  his  face  was  written  the  unquestioning 
faith  that  nothing  on  earth  could  prevent  the  patient 
from  getting  well  now. 

Christ  knew  how  to  preach  to  these  simple, 
superstitious,  disease-tortured  creatures:  He  healed 
the  sick.  They  flocked  to  our  poor  human  doctor 
this  morning  when  the  fame  of  what  he  had  done  to 
the  sick  child  went  abroad  in  the  land,  and  they 
worshiped  him  with  their  eyes  while  they  did  not 
know  as  yet  whether  there  was  virtue  in  his  simples 
or  not.  The  ancestors  of  these — people  precisely 
like  them  in  color,  dress,  manners,  customs,  simplic- 
ity— flocked  in  vast  multitudes  after  Christ,  and 
when  they  saw  Him  make  the  afflicted  whole  with  a 
word,  it  is  no  wonder  they  worshiped  Him.  No 
wonder  His  deeds  were  the  talk  of  the  nation.  No 
wonder  the  multitude  that  followed  Him  was  so 
great  that  at  one  time — thirty  miles  from  here — 
they  had  to  let  a  sick  man  down  through  the  roof 
because  no  approach  could  be  made  to  the  door; 
no  wonder  His  audiences  were  so  great  at  Galilee 
that  He  had  to  preach  from  a  ship  removed  a  little 
distance  from  the  shore ;  no  wonder  that  even  in  the 
desert  places  about  Bethsaida,  five  thousand  invaded 
His  solitude,  and  He  had  to  feed  them  by  a  miracle 
or  else  see  them  suffer  for  their  confiding  faith  and 
devotion;  no  wonder  when  there  was  a  great  com- 
motion in  a  city  in  those  days,  one  neighbor  ex- 
plained it  to  another  in  words  to  this  effect:  "They 
say  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  come!" 

Well,  as  I  was  saying,  the  doctor  distributed 
201 


MARK    TWAIN 

medicine  as  long  as  he  had  any  to  distribute,  and 
his  reputation  is  mighty  in  Galilee  this  day.  Among 
his  patients  was  the  child  of  the  Sheik's  daughter — 
for  even  this  poor,  ragged  handful  of  sores  and  sin 
has  its  royal  Sheik — a  poor  old  mummy  that  looked 
as  if  he  would  be  more  at  home  in  a  poorhouse 
than  in  the  Chief  Magistracy  of  this  tribe  of  hope- 
less, shirtless  savages.  The  princess — I  mean  the 
Sheik's  daughter — was  only  thirteen  or  fourteen 
years  old,  and  had  a  very  sweet  face  and  a  pretty 
one.  She  was  the  only  Syrian  female  we  have  seen 
yet  who  was  not  so  sinfully  ugly  that  she  couldn't 
smile  after  ten  o'clock  Saturday  night  without 
breaking  the  Sabbath.  Her  child  was  a  hard  speci- 
men, though — there  wasn't  enough  of  it  to  make  a 
pie,  and  the  poor  little  thing  looked  so  pleadingly 
up  at  all  who  came  near  it  (as  if  it  had  an  idea  that 
now  was  its  chance  or  never)  that  we  were  rilled  with 
compassion  which  was  genuine  and  not  put  on. 

But  this  last  new  horse  I  have  got  is  trying  to 
break  his  neck  over  the  tent-ropes,  and  I  shall  have 
to  go  out  and  anchor  him.  Jericho  and  I  have 
parted  company.  The  new  horse  is  not  much  to 
boast  of,  I  think.  One  of  his  hind  legs  bends  the 
wrong  way,  and  the  other  one  is  as  straight  and  stiff 
as  a  tent-pole.  Most  of  his  teeth  are  gone,  and  he 
is  as  blind  as  a  bat.  His  nose  has  been  broken  at 
some  time  or  other,  and  is  arched  like  a  culvert 
now.  His  under-lip  hangs  down  like  a  camel's,  and 
his  ears  are  chopped  off  close  to  his  head.  I  had 
some  trouble  at  first  to  find  a  name  for  him,  but  I 
finally  concluded  to  call  him  Baalbec,  because  he  is 

202 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

such  a  magnificent  ruin.  I  cannot  keep  from  talking 
about  my  horses,  because  I  have  a  very  long  and 
tedious  journey  before  me,  and  they  naturally  oc- 
cupy my  thoughts  about  as  much  as  matters  of  ap- 
parently much  greater  importance. 

We  satisfied  our  pilgrims  by  making  those  hard 
rides  from  Baalbec  to  Damascus,  but  Dan's  horse 
and  Jack's  were  so  crippled  we  had  to  leave  them 
behind  and  get  fresh  animals  for  them.  The  drago- 
man says  Jack's  horse  died.  I  swapped  horses  with 
Mohammed,  the  kingly -looking  Egyptian  who  is  our 
Ferguson's  lieutenant.  By  Ferguson  I  mean  our 
dragoman  Abraham,  of  course.  I  did  not  take  this 
horse  on  account  of  his  personal  appearance,  but 
because  I  have  not  seen  his  back.  I  do  not  wish  to 
see  it.  I  have  seen  the  backs  of  all  the  other  horses, 
and  found  most  of  them  covered  with  dreadful 
saddle-boils  which  I  know  have  not  been  washed  or 
doctored  for  years.  The  idea  of  riding  all  day  long 
over  such  ghastly  inquisitions  of  torture  is  sickening. 
My  horse  must  be  like  the  others,  but  I  have  at  least 
the  consolation  of  not  knowing  it  to  be  so. 

I  hope  that  in  future  I  may  be  spared  any  more 
sentimental  praises  of  the  Arab's  idolatry  of  his 
horse.  In  boyhood  I  longed  to  be  an  Arab  of  the 
desert  and  have  a  beautiful  mare,  and  call  her 
Selim  or  Benjamin  or  Mohammed,  and  feed  her  with 
my  own  hands,  and  let  her  come  into  the  tent,  and 
teach  her  to  caress  me  and  look  fondly  upon  me 
with  her  great  tender  eyes;  and  I  wished  that  a 
stranger  might  come  at  such  a  time  and  offer  me  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  for  her,  so  that  I  could  do 

203 


MARK    TWAIN 

like  the  other  Arabs — hesitate,  yearn  for  the  money, 
but,  overcome  by  my  love  for  my  mare,  at  last  say, 
1 '  Part  with  thee,  my  beautiful  one !  Never  with  my 
life!  Away,  tempter,  I  scorn  thy  gold!"  and  then 
bound  into  the  saddle  and  speed  over  the  desert  like 
the  wind! 

But  I  recall  those  aspirations.  If  these  Arabs  be 
like  the  other  Arabs,  their  love  for  their  beautiful 
mares  is  a  fraud.  These  of  my  acquaintance  have 
no  love  for  their  horses,  no  sentiment  of  pity  for 
them,  and  no  knowledge  of  how  to  treat  them  or 
care  for  them.  The  Syrian  saddle-blanket  is  a 
quilted  mattress  two  or  three  inches  thick.  It  is 
never  removed  from  the  horse,  day  or  night.  It 
gets  full  of  dirt  and  hair,  and  becomes  soaked  with 
sweat.  It  is  bound  to  breed  sores.  These  pirates 
liever  think  of  washing  a  horse's  back.  They  do 
not  shelter  the  horses  in  the  tents,  either;  they 
must  stay  out  and  take  the  weather  as  it  comes. 
Look  at  poor  cropped  and  dilapidated  Baalbec,  and 
weep  for  the  sentiment  that  has  been  wasted  upon 
the  Selims  of  romance. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

ABOUT  an  hour's  ride  over  a  rough,  rocky  road, 
i\  half  flooded  with  water,  and  through  a  forest 
of  oaks  of  Bashan,  brought  us  to  Dan. 

From  a  little  mound  here  in  the  plain  issues  a 
broad  stream  of  limpid  water  and  forms  a  large 
shallow  pool,  and  then  rushes  furiously  onward, 
augmented  in  volume.  This  puddle  is  an  important 
source  of  the  Jordan.  Its  banks,  and  those  of  the 
brook,  are  respectably  adorned  with  blooming 
oleanders,  but  the  unutterable  beauty  of  the  spot 
will  not  throw  a  well-balanced  man  into  convulsions, 
as  the  Syrian  books  of  travel  would  lead  one  to 
suppose. 

From  the  spot  I  am  speaking  of,  a  cannon-ball 
would  carry  beyond  the  confines  of  Holy  Land  and 
light  upon  profane  ground  three  miles  away.  We 
were  only  one  little  hour's  travel  within  the  borders 
of  Holy  Land — we  had  hardly  begun  to  appreciate 
yet  that  we  were  standing  upon  any  different  sort  of 
earth  than  that  we  had  always  been  used  to,  and  yet 
see  how  the  historic  names  began  already  to  cluster! 
Dan — Bashan — Lake  Huleh — the  Sources  of  Jor- 
dan— the  Sea  of  Galilee.  They  were  all  in  sight 
but  the  last,  and  it  was  not  far  away.  The  little 
township  of  Bashan  was  once  the  kingdom  so  famous 

205 


MARK    TWAIN 

in  Scripture  for  its  bulls  and  its  oaks.  Lake  Huleh 
is  the  Biblical  ''Waters  of  Merom."  Dan  was  the 
northern  and  Beersheba  the  southern  limit  of  Pales- 
tine— hence  the  expression  "from  Dan  to  Beer- 
sheba." It  is  equivalent  to  our  phrases  "from 
Maine  to  Texas" — "from  Baltimore  to  San  Fran- 
cisco." Our  expression  and  that  of  the  Israelites 
both  mean  the  same — great  distance.  With  their 
slow  camels  and  asses,  it  was  about  a  seven  days' 
journey  from  Dan  to  Beersheba — say  a  hundred 
and  fifty  or  sixty  miles — it  was  the  entire  length  of 
their  country,  and  was  not  to  be  undertaken  without 
great  preparation  and  much  ceremony.  When  the 
prodigal  traveled  to  "a  far  country,"  it  is  not  likely 
that  he  went  more  than  eighty  or  ninety  miles. 
Palestine  is  only  from  forty  to  sixty  miles  wide.  The 
state  of  Missouri  could  be  split  into  three  Palestines, 
and  there  would  then  be  enough  material  left  for  part 
of  another — possibly  a  whole  one.  From  Baltimore 
to  San  Francisco  is  several  thousand  miles,  but  it 
will  be  only  a  seven  days'  journey  in  the  cars  when 
I  am  two  or  three  years  older.1  If  I  live  I  shall 
necessarily  have  to  go  across  the  continent  every 
now  and  then  in  those  cars,  but  one  journey  from 
Dan  to  Beersheba  will  be  sufficient,  no  doubt.  It 
must  be  the  most  trying  of  the  two.  Therefore,  if 
we  chance  to  discover  that  from  Dan  to  Beersheba 
seemed  a  mighty  stretch  of  country  to  the  Israelites, 
let  us  not  be  airy  with  them,  but  reflect  that  it  was 
and  is  a  mighty  stretch  when  one  cannot  traverse  it 
by  rail. 

1  The  railroad  has  been  completed  since  the  above  was  written. 

206 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

The  small  mound  I  have  mentioned  a  while  ago 
was  once  occupied  by  the  Phoenician  city  of  Laish. 
A  party  of  filibusters  from  Zorah  and  Eshcol  cap- 
tured the  place,  and  lived  there  in  a  free  and  easy 
way,  worshiping  gods  of  their  own  manufacture  and 
stealing  idols  from  their  neighbors  whenever  they 
wore  their  own  out.  Jeroboam  set  up  a  golden  calf 
here  to  fascinate  his  people  and  keep  them  from 
making  dangerous  trips  to  Jerusalem  to  worship, 
which  might  result  in  a  return  to  their  rightful 
allegiance.  With  all  respect  for  those  ancient  Israel- 
ites, I  cannot  overlook  the  fact  that  they  were  not 
always  virtuous  enough  to  withstand  the  seductions 
of  a  golden  calf.  Human  nature  has  not  changed 
much  since  then. 

Some  forty  centuries  ago  the  city  of  Sodom  was 
pillaged  by  the  Arab  princes  of  Mesopotamia,  and 
among  other  prisoners  they  seized  upon  the  patri- 
arch Lot  and  brought  him  here  on  their  way  to  their 
own  possessions.  They  brought  him  to  Dan,  and 
father  Abraham,  who  was  pursuing  them,  crept 
softly  in  at  dead  of  night,  among  the  whispering 
oleanders  and  under  the  shadows  of  the  stately  oaks, 
and  fell  upon  the  slumbering  victors  and  startled 
them  from  their  dreams  with  the  clash  of  steel.  He 
recaptured  Lot  and  all  the  other  plunder. 

We  moved  on.  We  were  now  in  a  green  valley, 
five  or  six  miles  wide  and  fifteen  long.  The  streams 
which  are  called  the  sources  of  the  Jordan  flow 
through  it  to  Lake  Huleh,  a  shallow  pond  three  miles 
in  diameter,  and  from  the  southern  extremity  of  the 
lake  the  concentrated  Jordan  flows  out.     The  lake  is 

207 


MARK    TWAIN 

surrounded  by  a  broad  marsh,  grown  with  reeds. 
Between  the  marsh  and  the  mountains  which  wall 
the  valley  is  a  respectable  strip  of  fertile  land;  at 
the  end  of  the  valley,  toward  Dan,  as  much  as  half 
the  land  is  solid  and  fertile,  and  watered  by  Jordan's 
sources.  There  is  enough  of  it  to  make  a  farm.  It 
almost  warrants  the  enthusiasm  of  the  spies  of  that 
rabble  of  adventurers  who  captured  Dan.  They 
said:  "We  have  seen  the  land,  and  behold  it  is  very 
good.  ...  A  place  where  there  is  no  want  of  any- 
thing that  is  in  the  earth." 

Their  enthusiasm  was  at  least  warranted  by  the 
fact  that  they  had  never  seen  a  country  as  good  as 
this.  There  was  enough  of  it  for  the  ample  support 
of  their  six  hundred  men  and  their  families,  too. 

When  we  got  fairly  down  on  the  level  part  of  the 
Danite  farm,  we  came  to  places  where  we  could 
actually  run  our  horses.  It  was  a  notable  circum- 
stance. 

We  had  been  painfully  clambering  over  intermin- 
able hills  and  rocks  for  days  together,  and  when  we 
suddenly  came  upon  this  astonishing  piece  of  rock- 
less  plain,  every  man  drove  the  spurs  into  his  horse 
and  sped  away  with  a  velocity  he  could  surely  enjoy 
to  the  utmost,  but  could  never  hope  to  comprehend 
in  Syria. 

Here  were  evidences  of  cultivation — a  rare  sight 
in  this  country — an  acre  or  two  of  rich  soil  studded 
with  last  year's  dead  corn-stalks  of  the  thickness 
of  your  thumb  and  very  wide  apart.  But  in  such 
a  land  it  was  a  thrilling  spectacle.  Close  to  it  was  a 
stream,  and  on  its  banks  a  great  herd  of  curious- 

208 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

looking  Syrian  goats  and  sheep  were  gratefully  gat- 
ing gravel.  I  do  not  state  this  as  a  petrified  feet — • 
I  only  suppose  they  were  eating  gravel,  because  there 
did  not  appear  to  be  anything  else  for  them  t&  eat. 
The  shepherds  that  tended  them  were  the  vet*--  pic- 
tures of  Joseph  and  his  brethren,  I  have  no  doubt  in 
the  world.  They  were  tall,  muscular,  and  vesy 
dark-skinned  Bedouins,  with  inky  black  beards. 
They  had  firm  lips,  unquailing  eyes,  and  a  kingly 
stateliness  of  bearing.  They  wore  the  parti-colored 
half  bonnet,  half  hood,  with  fringed  ends  falling 
upon  their  shoulders,  and  the  full,  flowing  robe 
barred  with  broad  black  stripes — the  dress  one  sees 
in  all  pictures  of  the  swarthy  sons  of  the  desert. 
These  chaps  would  sell  their  younger  brothers  if  they 
had  a  chance,  I  think.  They  have  the  manners,  the 
customs,  the  dress,  the  occupation,  and  the  loose 
principles  of  the  ancient  stock.  [They  attacked  our 
camp  last  night,  and  I  bear  them  no  good  will.] 
They  had  with  them  the  pygmy  jackasses  one  sees 
all  over  Syria  and  remembers  in  all  pictures  of  the 
"Flight  into  Egypt,"  where  Mary  and  the  Young 
Child  are  riding  and  Joseph  is  walking  alongside, 
towering  high  above  the  little  donkey's  shoulders. 

But,  really,  here  the  man  rides  and  carries  the 
child,  as  a  general  thing,  and  the  woman  walks. 
The  customs  have  not  changed  since  Joseph's  time. 
We  would  not  have  in  our  houses  a  picture  repre- 
senting Joseph  riding  and  Mary  walking;  we  would 
see  profanation  in  it,  but  a  Syrian  Christian  would 
not.  I  know  that  hereafter  the  picture  I  first  spoke 
of  will  look  odd  to  me. 

209 


MARK    TWAIN 

We  could  not  stop  to  rest  two  or  three  hours  out 
from  our  camp,  of  course,  albeit  the  brook  was 
beside  us.  So  we  went  on  an  hour  longer.  We 
saw  water  then,  but  nowhere  in  all  the  waste  around 
was  there  a  foot  of  shade,  and  we  were  scorching  to 
death.  "Like  unto  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a 
weary  land."  Nothing  in  the  Bible  is  more  beauti- 
ful than  that,  and  surely  there  is  no  place  we  have 
wandered  to  that  is  able  to  give  it  such  touching 
expression  as  this  blistering,  naked,  treeless  land. 

Here  you  do  not  stop  just  when  you  please,  but 
when  you  can.  We  found  water,  but  no  shade. 
We  traveled  on  and  found  a  tree  at  last,  but  no 
water.  We  rested  and  lunched,  and  came  on  to  this 
place,  Ain  Mellahah  (the  boys  call  it  B  aid  wins  ville). 
It  was  a  very  short  day's  run,  but  the  dragoman 
does  not  want  to  go  further,  and  has  invented  a 
plausible  lie  about  the  country  beyond  this  being 
infested  by  ferocious  Arabs,  who  would  make  sleep- 
ing in  their  midst  a  dangerous  pastime.  Well,  they 
ought  to  be  dangerous.  They  carry  a  rusty  old 
weather-beaten  flintlock  gun,  with  a  barrel  that  is 
longer  than  themselves;  it  has  no  sights  on  it;  it 
will  not  carry  farther  than  a  brickbat,  and  is  not 
half  so  certain.  And  the  great  sash  they  wear  in 
many  a  fold  around  their  waists  has  two  or  three 
absurd  old  horse-pistols  in  it  that  are  rusty  from 
eternal  disuse — weapons  that  would  hang  fire  just 
about  long  enough  for  you  to  walk  out  of  range, 
and  then  burst  and  blow  the  Arab's  head  off.  Ex- 
ceedingly dangerous  these  sons  of  the  desert  are. 

It  used  to  make  my  blood  run  cold  to  read  Wm. 

2IO 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

C.  Grimes's  hairbreadth  escapes  from  Bedouins,  but 
I  think  I  could  read  them  now  without  a  tremor. 
He  never  said  he  was  attacked  by  Bedouins,  I  be- 
lieve, or  was  ever  treated  uncivilly,  but  then  in  about 
every  other  chapter  he  discovered  them  approach- 
ing, anyhow,  and  he  had  a  blood-curdling  fashion 
of  working  up  the  peril;  and  of  wondering  how  his 
relations  far  away  would  feel  could  they  see  their 
poor  wandering  boy,  with  his  weary  feet  and  his 
dim  eyes,  in  such  fearful  danger;  and  of  thinking 
for  the  last  time  of  the  old  homestead,  and  the  dear 
old  church,  and  the  cow,  and  those  things;  and  of 
finally  straightening  his  form  to  its  utmost  height  in 
the  saddle,  drawing  his  trusty  revolver,  and  then 
dashing  the  spurs  into  "Mohammed"  and  sweeping 
down  upon  the  ferocious  enemy  determined  to  sell 
his  life  as  dearly  as  possible.  True,  the  Bedouins 
never  did  anything  to  him  when  he  arrived,  and 
never  had  any  intention  of  doing  anything  to  him  in 
the  first  place,  and  wondered  what  in  the  mischief  he 
was  making  all  that  to-do  about;  but  still  I  could 
not  divest  myself  of  the  idea,  somehow,  that  a 
frightful  peril  had  been  escaped  through  that  man's 
daredevil  bravery,  and  so  I  never  could  read  about 
Wm.  C.  Grimes's  Bedouins  and  sleep  comfortably 
afterward.  But  I  believe  the  Bedouins  to  be  a 
fraud,  now.  I  have  seen  the  monster,  and  I  can 
outrun  him.  I  shall  never  be  afraid  of  his  daring  to 
stand  behind  his  own  gun  and  discharge  it. 

About  fifteen  hundred  years  before  Christ,  this 
camp-ground  of  ours  by  the  Waters  of  Merom  was 
the  scene  of  one  of  Joshua's  exterminating  battles. 

211 


MARK    TWAIN 

Jabin,  King  of  Hazor  (up  yonder  above  Dan), 
called  all  the  sheiks  about  him  together,  with  their 
hosts,  to  make  ready  for  Israel's  terrible  General 
who  was  approaching. 

And  when  all  these  Kings  were  met  together,  they  came  and 
pitched  together  by  the  Waters  of  Merom,  to  fight  against  Israel. 

And  they  went  out,  they  and  all  their  hosts  with  them,  much 
people,  even  as  the  sand  that  is  upon  the  seashore  for  multi- 
tude [etc.]. 

But  Joshua  fell  upon  them  and  utterly  destroyed 
them,  root  and  branch.  That  was  his  usual  policy 
in  war.  He  never  left  any  chance  for  newspaper 
controversies  about  who  won  the  battle.  He  made 
this  valley,  so  quiet  now,  a  reeking  slaughter-pen. 

Somewhere  in  this  part  of  the  country — I  do  not 
know  exactly  where — Israel  fought  another  bloody 
battle  a  hundred  years  later.  Deborah,  the  prophet- 
ess, told  Barak  to  take  ten  thousand  men  and  sally 
forth  against  another  King  Jabin  who  had  been 
doing  something.  Barak  came  down  from  Mount 
Tabor,  twenty  or  twenty-five  miles  from  here,  and 
gave  battle  to  Jabin's  forces,  who  were  in  command 
of  Sisera.  Barak  won  the  fight,  and  while  he  was 
making  the  victory  complete  by  the  usual  method  of 
exterminating  the  remnant  of  the  defeated  host, 
Sisera  fled  away  on  foot,  and  when  he  was  nearly 
exhausted  by  fatigue  and  thirst,  one  Jael,  a  woman 
he  seems  to  have  been  acquainted  with,  invited  him 
to  come  into  her  tent  and  rest  himself.  The  weary 
soldier  acceded  readily  enough,  and  Jael  put  him  to 
bed.  He  said  he  was  very  thirsty,  and  asked  his 
generous  preserver  to  get  him  a  cup  of  water.     She 

212 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

brought  him  some  milk,  and  he  drank  of  it  grate- 
fully and  lay  down  again,  to  forget  in  pleasant 
dreams  his  lost  battle  and  his  humbled  pride. 
Presently  when  he  was  asleep  she  came  softly  in 
with  a  hammer  and  drove  a  hideous  tent-pin  down 
through  his  brain ! 

"For  he  was  fast  asleep  and  weary.  So  he  died." 
Such  is  the  touching  language  of  the  Bible.  "The 
Song  of  Deborah  and  Barak"  praises  Jael  for  the 
memorable  service  she  had  rendered,  in  an  exultant 
strain : 

Blessed  above  women  shall  Jael  the  wife  of  Heber  the  Kenite 
be,  blessed  shall  she  be  above  women  in  the  tent. 

He  asked  for  water,  and  she  gave  him  milk;  she  brought 
forth  butter  in  a  lordly  dish. 

She  put  her  hand  to  the  nail,  and  her  right  hand  to  the  work- 
man's hammer;  and  with  the  hammer  she  smote  Sisera,  she  smote 
off  his  head  when  she  had  pierced  and  stricken  through  his  tem- 
ples. 

At  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell,  he  lay  down:  at  her  feet  he 
bowed,  he  fell;  where  he  bowed,  there  he  fell  down  dead. 

Stirring  scenes  like  these  occur  in  this  valley  no 
more.  There  is  not  a  solitary  village  throughout  its 
whole  extent — not  for  thirty  miles  in  either  direc- 
tion. There  are  two  or  three  small  clusters  of 
Bedouin  tents,  but  not  a  single  permanent  habita- 
tion. One  may  ride  ten  miles,  hereabouts,  and  not 
see  ten  human  beings. 

To  this  region  one  of  the  prophecies  is  applied : 

I  will  bring  the  land  into  desolation;  and  your  enemies  which 
dwell  therein  shall  be  astonished  at  it.  And  I  will  scatter  you 
among  the  heathen,  and  I  will  draw  out  a  sword  after  you;  and 
your  land  shall  be  desolate  and  your  cities  waste. 

213 


MARK    TWAIN 

No  man  can  stand  here  by  deserted  Ain  Mellahah 
and  say  the  prophecy  has  not  been  fulfilled. 

In  a  verse  from  the  Bible  which  I  have  quoted 
above,  occurs  the  phrase  "all  these  kings."  It  at- 
tracted my  attention  in  a  moment,  because  it  carries 
to  my  mind  such  a  vastly  different  significance  from 
what  it  always  did  at  home.  I  can  see  easily  enough 
that  if  I  wish  to  profit  by  this  tour  and  come  to  a 
correct  understanding  of  the  matters  of  interest 
connected  with  it,  I  must  studiously  and  faithfully 
unlearn  a  great  many  things  I  have  somehow  ab- 
sorbed concerning  Palestine.  I  must  begin  a  system 
of  reduction.  Like  my  grapes  which  the  spies  bore 
out  of  the  Promised  Land,  I  have  got  everything 
in  Palestine  on  too  large  a  scale.  Some  of  my 
ideas  were  wild  enough.  The  word  Palestine  always 
brought  to  my  mind  a  vague  suggestion  of  a  country 
as  large  as  the  United  States.  I  do  not  know  why, 
but  such  was  the  case.  I  suppose  it  was  because  I 
could  not  conceive  of  a  small  country  having  so 
large  a  history.  I  think  I  was  a  little  surprised  to 
find  that  the  grand  Sultan  of  Turkey  was  a  man  of 
only  ordinary  size.  I  must  try  to  reduce  my  ideas 
of  Palestine  to  a  more  reasonable  shape.  One  gets 
large  impressions  in  boyhood,  sometimes,  which  he 
has  to  fight  against  all  his  life.  "All  these  kings." 
When  I  used  to  read  that  in  Sunday-school,  it  sug- 
gested to  me  the  several  kings  of  such  countries  as 
England,  France,  Spain,  Germany,  Russia,  etc.,  ar- 
rayed in  splendid  robes  ablaze  with  jewels,  march- 
ing in  grave  procession,  with  scepters  of  gold  in  their 
hands  and  flashing  crowns  upon  their  heads.     But 

214 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

here  in  Ain  Mellahah,  after  coming  through  Syria, 
and  after  giving  serious  study  to  the  character  and 
customs  of  the  country,  the  phrase  "all  these  kings" 
loses  its  grandeur.  It  suggests  only  a  parcel  of 
petty  chiefs — ill-clad  and  ill-conditioned  savages 
much  like  our  Indians,  who  lived  in  full  sight  of 
each  other  and  whose  "kingdoms"  were  large  wThen 
they  were  five  miles  square  and  contained  two 
thousand  souls.  The  combined  monarchies  of  the 
thirty  "kings"  destroyed  by  Joshua  on  one  of  his 
famous  campaigns,  only  covered  an  area  about 
equal  to  four  of  our  counties  of  ordinary  size.  The 
poor  old  sheik  we  saw  at  Cesarea  Philippi,  with  his 
ragged  band  of  a  hundred  followers,  would  have 
been  called  a  "king"  in  those  ancient  times. 

It  is  seven  in  the  morning,  and  as  we  are  in  the 
country,  the  grass  ought  to  be  sparkling  with  dew, 
the  flowers  enriching  the  air  with  their  fragrance, 
and  the  birds  singing  in  the  trees.  But,  alas!  there 
is  no  dew  here,  nor  flowers,  nor  birds,  nor  trees. 
There  is  a  plain  and  an  unshaded  lake,  and  beyond 
them  some  barren  mountains.  The  tents  are  tum- 
bling, the  Arabs  are  quarreling  like  dogs  and  cats, 
as  usual,  the  camp-ground  is  strewn  with  packages 
and  bundles,  the  labor  of  packing  them  upon  the 
backs  of  the  mules  is  progressing  with  great  activity, 
the  horses  are  saddled,  the  umbrellas  are  out,  and  in 
ten  minutes  we  shall  mount  and  the  long  procession 
will  move  again.  The  white  city  of  the  Mellahah, 
resurrected  for  a  moment  out  of  the  dead  centuries, 
will  have  disappeared  again  and  left  no  sign. 

215 


CHAPTER  XX 

WE  traversed  some  miles  of  desolate  country 
whose  soil  is  rich  enough,  but  is  given  over 
wholly  to  weeds — a  silent,  mournful  expanse,  wherein 
we  saw  only  three  persons — Arabs,  with  nothing 
on  but  a  long  coarse  shirt  like  the "  tow-linen " 
shirts  which  used  to  form  the  only  summer  garment 
of  little  negro  boys  on  Southern  plantations.  Shep- 
herds they  were,  and  they  charmed  their  flocks  with 
the  traditional  shepherd's  pipe — a  reed  instrument 
that  made  music  as  exquisitely  infernal  as  these 
same  Arabs  create  when  they  sing. 

In  their  pipes  lingered  no  echo  of  the  wonderful 
music  the  shepherd  forefathers  heard  in  the  Plains  of 
Bethlehem  what  time  the  angels  sang  "Peace  on 
earth,  good  will  to  men." 

Part  of  the  ground  we  came  over  was  not  ground 
at  all,  but  rocks — cream-colored  rocks,  worn  smooth, 
as  if  by  water;  with  seldom  an  edge  or  a  corner  on 
them,  but  scooped  out,  honeycombed,  bored  out 
with  eye-holes,  and  thus  wrought  into  all  manner 
of  quaint  shapes,  among  which  the  uncouth  imita- 
tion of  skulls  was  frequent.  Over  this  part  of  the 
route  were  occasional  remains  of  an  old  Roman  road 
like  the  Appian  Way,  whose  paving-stones  still 
clung  to  their  places  with  Roman  tenacity. 

216 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Gray  lizards,  those  heirs  of  ruin,  of  sepulchers 
and  desolation,  glided  in  and  out  among  the  rocks 
or  lay  still  and  sunned  themselves.  Where  pros- 
perity has  reigned,  and  fallen;  where  glory  has 
flamed,  and  gone  out;  where  beauty  has  dwelt,  and 
passed  away;  where  gladness  was,  and  sorrow  is; 
where  the  pomp  of  life  has  been,  and  silence  and 
death  brood  in  its  high  places,  there  this  reptile 
makes  his  home,  and  mocks  at  human  vanity.  His 
coat  is  the  color  of  ashes ;  and  ashes  are  the  symbol  of 
hopes  that  have  perished,  of  aspirations  that  came  to 
naught,  of  loves  that  are  buried.  If  he  could  speak, 
he  would  say,  Build  temples:  I  will  lord  it  in  their 
ruins;  build  palaces:  I  will  inhabit  them;  erect 
empires:  I  will  inherit  them;  bury  your  beautiful: 
I  will  watch  the  worms  at  their  work ;  and  you,  who 
stand  here  and  moralize  over  me:  I  will  crawl  over 
your  corpse  at  the  last. 

A  few  ants  were  in  this  desert  place,  but  merely 
to  spend  the  summer.  They  brought  their  provi- 
sions from  Ain  Mellahah — eleven  miles. 

Jack  is  not  very  well  to-day,  it  is  easy  to  see;  but, 
boy  as  he  is,  he  is  too  much  of  a  man  to  speak  of 
it.  He  exposed  himself  to  the  sun  too  much  yester- 
day, but  since  it  came  of  his  earnest  desire  to  learn, 
and  to  make  this  journey  as  useful  as  the  oppor- 
tunities will  allow,  no  one  seeks  to  discourage  him 
by  faultfinding.  We  missed  him  an  hour  from  the 
camp,  and  then  found  him  some  distance  away,  by 
the  edge  of  a  brook,  and  with  no  umbrella  to  protect 
him  from  the  fierce  sun.  If  he  had  been  used  to 
going  without  his  umbrella,  it  would  have  been  well 

217 


MARK    TWAIN 

enough,  of  course;  but  he  was  not.  He  was  just  in 
the  act  of  throwing  a  clod  at  a  mud-turtle  which  was 
sunning  itself  on  a  small  log  in  the  brook.  We 
said: 

"Don't  do  that,  Jack.  What  do  you  want  to 
harm  him  for?     What  has  he  done?" 

"Well,  then,  I  won't  kill  him,  but  I  ought  to, 
because  he  is  a  fraud." 

We  asked  him  why,  but  he  said  it  was  no  matter. 
We  asked  him  why,  once  or  twice,  as  we  walked 
back  to  the  camp,  but  he  still  said  it  was  no  matter. 
But  late  at  night,  when  he  was  sitting  in  a  thought- 
ful mood  on  the  bed,  we  asked  him  again  and  he 
said: 

"Well,  it  don't  matter;  I  don't  mind  it  now,  but 
I  did  not  like  it  to-day,  you  know,  because  I  don't 
tell  anything  that  isn't  so,  and  I  don't  think  the 
Colonel  ought  to,  either.  But  he  did;  he  told  us 
at  prayers  in  the  Pilgrims'  tent,  last  night,  and  he 
seemed  as  if  he  was  reading  it  out  of  the  Bible,  too, 
about  this  country  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  and 
about  the  voice  of  the  turtle  being  heard  in  the 
land.  I  thought  that  was  drawing  it  a  little  strong, 
about  the  turtles,  anyhow,  but  I  asked  Mr.  Church 
if  it  was  so,  and  he  said  it  was,  and  what  Mr.  Church 
tells  me,  I  believe.  But  I  sat  there  and  watched 
that  turtle  nearly  an  hour  to-day,  and  I  almost 
burned  up  in  the  sun;  but  I  never  heard  him  sing. 
I  believe  I  sweated  a  double  handful  of  sweat — 
I  know  I  did — because  it  got  in  my  eyes,  and  it 
was  running  down  over  my  nose  all  the  time;  and 
you  know  my  pants  are  tighter  than  anybody  else's 

218 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

— Paris  foolishness — and  the  buckskin  seat  of  them 
got  wet  with  sweat,  and  then  got  dry  again  and 
began  to  draw  up  and  pinch  and  tear  loose — it  was 
awful — but  I  never  heard  him  sing.  Finally  I  said, 
This  is  a  fraud — that  is  what  it  is,  it  is  a  fraud — 
and  if  I  had  had  any  sense  I  might  have  known  a 
cursed  mud-turtle  couldn't  sing.  And  then  I  said, 
I  don't  wish  to  be  hard  on  this  fellow,  and  I  will 
just  give  him  ten  minutes  to  commence;  ten  min- 
utes— and  then  if  he  don't,  down  goes  his  building. 
But  he  didn't  commence,  you  know.  I  had  stayed 
there  all  that  time,  thinking  maybe  he  might,  pretty 
soon,  because  he  kept  on  raising  his  head  up  and 
letting  it  down,  and  drawing  the  skin  over  his  eyes 
for  a  minute  and  then  opening  them  out  again,  as 
if  he  was  trying  to  study  up  something  to  sing,  but 
just  as  the  ten  minutes  were  up  and  I  was  all  beat  out 
and  blistered,  he  laid  his  blamed  head  down  on  a 
knot  and  went  fast  asleep." 

"It  was  a  little  hard,  after  you  had  waited  so 
long." 

"I  should  think  so.  I  said,  Well,  if  you  won't 
sing,  you  sha'n't  sleep,  anyway;  and  if  you  fellows 
had  let  me  alone  I  would  have  made  him  shin  out  of 
Galilee  quicker  than  any  turtle  ever  did  yet.  But  it 
isn't  any  matter  now — let  it  go.  The  skin  is  all  off 
the  back  of  my  neck." 

About  ten  in  the  morning  we  halted  at  Joseph's 
Pit.  This  is  a  ruined  Khan  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in 
one  of  whose  side  courts  is  a  great  walled  and 
arched  pit  with  water  in  it,  and  this  pit,  one  tradition 
says,  is  the  one  Joseph's  brethren  cast  him  into.     A 

219 


MARK    TWAIN 

inore  authentic  tradition,  aided  by  the  geography 
of  the  country,  places  the  pit  in  Dothan,  some  two 
days'  journey  from  here.  However,  since  there  are 
many  who  believe  in  this  present  pit  as  the  true  one, 
it  has  its  interest. 

It  is  hard  to  make  a  choice  of  the  most  beautiful 
passage  in  a  book  which  is  so  gemmed  with  beautiful 
passages  as  the  Bible;  but  it  is  certain  that  not 
many  things  within  its  lids  may  take  rank  above  the 
exquisite  story  of  Joseph.  Who  taught  those  ancient 
writers  their  simplicity  of  language,  their  felicity  of 
expression,  their  pathos,  and,  above  all,  their  faculty 
of  sinking  themselves  entirely  out  of  sight  of  the 
reader  and  making  the  narrative  stand  out  alone  and 
seem  to  tell  itself?  Shakespeare  is  always  present 
when  one  reads  his  book ;  Macaulay  is  present  when 
we  follow  the  march  of  his  stately  sentences;  but 
the  Old  Testament  writers  are  hidden  from  view. 

If  the  pit  I  have  been  speaking  of  is  the  right  one, 
a  scene  transpired  there,  long  ages  ago,  which  is 
familiar  to  us  all  in  pictures.  The  sons  of  Jacob 
had  been  pasturing  their  flocks  near  there.  Their 
father  grew  uneasy  at  their  long  absence,  and  sent 
Joseph,  his  favorite,  to  see  if  anything  had  gone 
wrong  with  them.  He  traveled  six  or  seven  days* 
journey ;  he  was  only  seventeen  years  old,  and,  bcy- 
like,  he  toiled  through  that  long  stretch  of  the  vilest, 
rockiest,  dustiest  country  in  Asia,  arrayed  in  the 
pride  of  his  heart,  his  beautiful  claw-hammer  coat 
of  many  colors.  Joseph  was  the  favorite,  and  that 
was  one  crime  in  the  eyes  of  his  brethren;  he  had 
dreamed   dreams,    and   interpreted   them   to  fore- 

220 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

shadow  his  elevation  far  above  all  his  family  in  the 
far  future,  and  that  was  another;  he  was  dressed 
well  and  had  doubtless  displayed  the  harmless  vanity 
of  youth  in  keeping  the  fact  prominently  before  his 
brothers.  These  were  crimes  his  elders  fretted  over 
among  themselves  and  proposed  to  punish  when  the 
opportunity  should  offer.  When  they  saw  him 
coming  up  from  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  they  recognized 
him  and  were  glad.  They  said,  "Lo,  here  is  this 
dreamer — let  us  kill  him.,,  But  Reuben  pleaded 
for  his  life,  and  they  spared  it.  But  they  seized  the 
boy,  and  stripped  the  hated  coat  from  his  back  and 
pushed  him  into  the  pit.  They  intended  to  let  him 
die  there,  but  Reuben  intended  to  liberate  him 
secretly.  However,  while  Reuben  was  away  for  a 
little  while,  the  brethren  sold  Joseph  to  some  Ish- 
maelitish  merchants  who  were  journeying  toward 
Egypt.  Such  is  the  history  of  the  pit.  And  the 
selfsame  pit  is  there  in  that  place,  even  to  this  day; 
and  there  it  will  remain  until  the  next  detachment  of 
image-breakers  and  tomb-desecrators  arrives  from 
the  Quaker  City  excursion,  and  they  will  infallibly 
dig  it  up  and  carry  it  away  with  them.  For  behold 
in  them  is  no  reverence  for  the  solemn  monuments 
of  the  past,  and  whithersoever  they  go  they  destroy 
and  spare  not. 

Joseph  became  rich,  distinguished,  powerful — as 
the  Bible  expresses  it,  "lord  over  all  the  land  of 
Egypt."  Joseph  was  the  real  king,  the  strength, 
the  brain  of  the  monarchy,  though  Pharaoh  held  the 
title.  Joseph  is  one  of  the  truly  great  men  of  the 
Old  Testament.     And  he  was  the  noblest  and  the 

221 


MARK    TWAIN 

manliest,  save  Esau.  Why  shall  we  not  say  a  good 
word  for  the  princely  Bedouin?  The  only  crime 
that  can  be  brought  against  him  is  that  he  was  un- 
fortunate. Why  must  everybody  praise  Joseph's 
great-hearted  generosity  to  his  cruel  brethren,  with- 
out stint  of  fervent  language,  and  fling  only  a  re- 
luctant bone  of  praise  to  Esau  for  his  still  sublimer 
generosity  to  the  brother  who  had  wronged  him? 
Jacob  took  advantage  of  Esau's  consuming  hunger 
to  rob  him  of  his  birthright  and  the  great  honor  and 
consideration  that  belonged  to  the  position;  by 
treachery  and  falsehood  he  robbed  him  of  his 
father's  blessing;  he  made  of  him  a  stranger  in  his 
home,  and  a  wanderer.  Yet  after  twenty  years  had 
passed  away  and  Jacob  met  Esau  and  fell  at  his  feet 
quaking  with  fear  and  begging  piteously  to  be  spared 
the  punishment  he  knew  he  deserved,  what  did  that 
magnificent  savage  do?  He  fell  upon  his  neck  and 
embraced  him!  When  Jacob — who  was  incapable 
of  comprehending  nobility  of  character — still  doubt- 
ing, still  fearing,  insisted  upon  "finding  grace  with 
my  lord"  by  the  bribe  of  a  present  of  cattle,  what 
did  the  gorgeous  son  of  the  desert  say? 

"Nay,  I  have  enough,  my  brother;  keep  that 
thou  hast  unto  thyself!" 

Esau  found  Jacob  rich,  beloved  by  wives  and 
children,  and  traveling  in  state,  with  servants,  herds 
of  cattle  and  trains  of  camels — but  he  himself  was 
still  the  uncourted  outcast  this  brother  had  made 
him.  After  thirteen  years  of  romantic  mystery,  the 
brethren  who  had  wronged  Joseph,  came,  strangers 
in  a  strange  land,  hungry  and  humble,  to  buy  "a 

222 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

little  food";  "and  being  summoned  to  a  palace, 
charged  with  crime,  they  beheld  in  its  owner  their 
wronged  brother;  they  were  trembling  beggars — 
he,  the  lord  of  a  mighty  empire!  What  Joseph 
that  ever  lived  would  have  thrown  away  such  a 
chance  to  "show  off"?  Who  stands  first — outcast 
Esau  forgiving  Jacob  in  prosperity,  or  Joseph  on  a 
king's  throne  forgiving  the  ragged  tremblers  whose 
happy  rascality  placed  him  there? 

Just  before  we  came  to  Joseph's  Pit,  we  had 
"raised"  a  hill,  and  there,  a  few  miles  before  us, 
with  not  a  tree  or  a  shrub  to  interrupt  the  view,  lay 
a  vision  which  millions  of  worshipers  in  the  far  lands 
of  the  earth  would  give  half  their  possessions  to 
see — the  sacred  Sea  of  Galilee! 

Therefore  we  tarried  only  a  short  time  at  the  pit. 
We  rested  the  horses  and  ourselves,  and  felt  for  a 
few  minutes  the  blessed  shade  of  the  ancient  build- 
ings. We  were  out  of  water,  but  the  two  or  three 
scowling  Arabs,  with  their  long  guns,  who  were 
idling  about  the  place,  said  they  had  none  and  that 
there  was  none  in  the  vicinity.  They  knew  there 
was  a  little  brackish  water  in  the  pit,  but  they 
venerated  a  place  made  sacred  by  their  ancestor's 
imprisonment  too  much  to  be  willing  to  see  Christian 
dogs  drink  from  it.  But  Ferguson  tied  rags  and 
handkerchiefs  together  till  he  made  a  rope  long 
enough  to  lower  a  vessel  to  the  bottom,  and  we 
drank  and  then  rode  on;  and  in  a  short  time  we 
dismounted  on  those  shores  which  the  feet  of  the 
Saviour  have  made  holy  ground. 

At  noon  we  took  a  swim  in  the  Sea  of  Galilee — a 
223 


MARK    TWAIN 

blessed  privilege  in  this  roasting  climate — and  then 
lunched  under  a  neglected  old  fig  tree  at  the  fountain 
they  call  Ain-et-Tin,  a  hundred  yards  from  ruined 
Capernaum.  Every  rivulet  that  gurgles  out  of  the 
rocks  and  sands  of  this  part  of  the  world  is  dubbed 
with  the  title  of  "fountain,"  and  people  familiar 
with  the  Hudson,  the  Great  Lakes,  and  the  Missis- 
sippi fall  into  transports  of  admiration  over  them 
and  exhaust  their  powers  of  composition  in  writing 
their  praises.  If  all  the  poetry  and  nonsense  that 
have  been  discharged  upon  the  fountains  and  the 
bland  scenery  of  this  region  were  collected  in  a 
book,  it  would  make  a  most  valuable  volume  to 
burn. 

During  luncheon,  the  pilgrim  enthusiasts  of  our 
party,  who  had  been  so  light-hearted  and  happy 
ever  since  they  touched  holy  ground  that  they  did 
little  but  mutter  incoherent  rhapsodies,  could  scarce- 
ly eat,  so  anxious  were  they  to  "take  shipping"  and 
sail  in  very  person  upon  the  waters  that  had  borne 
the  vessels  of  the  Apostles.  Their  anxiety  grew  and 
their  excitement  augmented  with  every  fleeting  mo- 
ment, until  my  fears  were  aroused  and  I  began  to 
have  misgivings  that  in  their  present  condition  they 
might  break  recklessly  loose  from  all  considerations 
of  prudence  and  buy  a  whole  fleet  of  ships  to  sail  in 
instead  of  hiring  a  single  one  for  an  hour,  as  quiet 
folk  are  wont  to  do.  I  trembled  to  think  of  the 
ruined  purses  this  day's  performances  might  result 
in.  I  could  not  help  reflecting  bodingly  upon  the 
intemperate  zeal  with  which  middle-aged  men  are 
apt  to  surfeit   themselves  upon  a  seductive  folly 

224 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

which  they  have  tasted  for  the  first  time.  And  yet 
I  did  not  feel  that  I  had  a  right  to  be  surprised  at 
the  state  of  things  which  was  giving  me  so  much  con- 
cern. These  men  had  been  taught  from  infancy  to 
revere,  almost  to  worship,  the  holy  places  whereon 
their  happy  eyes  were  resting  now.  For  many  and 
many  a  year  this  very  picture  had  visited  their 
thoughts  by  day  and  floated  through  their  dreams  by 
night.  To  stand  before  it  in  the  flesh — to  see  it  as 
they  saw  it  now — to  sail  upon  the  hallowed  sea, 
and  kiss  the  holy  soil  that  compassed  it  about ;  these 
were  aspirations  they  had  cherished  while  a  genera- 
tion dragged  its  lagging  seasons  by  and  left  its 
furrows  in  their  faces  and  its  frosts  upon  their  hair. 
To  look  upon  this  picture,  and  sail  upon  this  sea, 
they  had  forsaken  home  and  its  idols  and  journeyed 
thousands  and  thousands  of  miles,  in  weariness  and 
tribulation.  What  wonder  that  the  sordid  lights  of 
work-day  prudence  should  pale  before  the  glory  of 
a  hope  like  theirs  in  the  full  splendor  of  its  fruition? 
Let  them  squander  millions!  I  said — who  speaks 
of  money  at  a  time  like  this? 

In  this  frame  of  mind  I  followed,  as  fast  as  I 
could,  the  eager  footsteps  of  the  pilgrims,  and  stood 
upon  the  shore  of  the  lake,  and  swelled,  with  hat 
and  voice,  the  frantic  hail  they  sent  after  the  "ship" 
that  was  speeding  by.  It  was  a  success.  The 
toilers  of  the  sea  ran  in  and  beached  their  bark. 
Joy  sat  upon  every  countenance. 

"How  much? — ask  him  how  much,  Ferguson! — 
how  much  to  take  us  all — eight  of  us  and  you — to 
Bethsaida,  yonder,  and  to  the  mouth  of  Jordan,  and 

225 


MARK    TWAIN 

to  the  place  where  the  swine  ran  down  into  the 
seL  —quick! — and  we  want  to  coast  around  every- 
where— everywhere! — all  day  long! — I  could  sail 
a  year  in  these  waters! — and  tell  him  we'll  stop 
at  Magdala  and  finish  at  Tiberias! — ask  him  how 
much!  —  anything  —  anything  whatever!  —  tell  him 
we  don't  care  what  the  expense  is!"  [I  said  to 
myself,  I  knew  how  it  would  be.] 

Ferguson — (interpreting) — "He  says  two  napo- 
leons— eight  dollars." 

One  or  two  countenances  fell.     Then  a  pause. 

"Too  much! — we'll  give  him  one!" 

I  never  shall  know  how  it  was — I  shudder  yet 
when  I  think  how  the  place  is  given  to  miracles — 
but  in  a  single  instant  of  time,  as  it  seemed  to  me, 
that  ship  was  twenty  paces  from  the  shore,  and 
speeding  away  like  a  frightened  thing!  Eight  crest- 
fallen creatures  stood  upon  the  shore,  and  oh,  to 
think  of  it!  this — this — after  all  that  overmaster- 
ing ecstasy!  Oh,  shameful,  shameful  ending,  after 
such  unseemly  boasting!  It  was  too  much  like 
"Ho!  let  me  at  him!"  followed  by  a  prudent  "Two 
of  you  hold  him — one  can  hold  me!" 

Instantly  there  was  wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth 
in  the  camp.  The  two  napoleons  were  offered — 
more  if  necessary — and  pilgrims  and  dragoman 
shouted  themselves  hoarse  with  pleadings  to  the 
retreating  boatmen  to  come  back.  But  they  sailed 
serenely  away  and  paid  no  further  heed  to  pilgrims 
who  had  dreamed  all  their  lives  of  some  day  skim- 
ming over  the  sacred  waters  of  Galilee  and  listening 
to  its  hallowed  story  in  the  whispering  of  its  waves, 

226 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  had  journeyed  countless  leagues  to  do  it,  and — 
and  then  concluded  that  the  fare  was  too  high. 
Impertinent  Mohammedan  Arabs,  to  think  such 
things  of  gentlemen  of  another  faith. 

Well,  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  just  submit  and 
forego  the  privilege  of  voyaging  on  Gennesaret,  after 
coming  half  around  the  globe  to  taste  that  pleasure. 
There  was  a  time,  when  the  Saviour  taught  here, 
that  boats  were  plenty  among  the  fishermen  of  the 
coasts — but  boats  and  fishermen  both  are  gone 
now;  and  old  Josephus  had  a  fleet  of  men-of-war  in 
these  waters  eighteen  centuries  ago — a  hundred  and 
thirty  bold  canoes — but  they,  also,  have  passed 
away  and  left  no  sign.  They  battle  here  no  more 
by  sea,  and  the  commercial  marine  of  Galilee  num- 
bers only  two  small  ships,  just  of  a  pattern  with  the 
little  skiffs  the  disciples  knew.  One  was  lost  to  us 
for  good — the  other  was  miles  away  and  far  out  of 
hail.  So  we  mounted  the  horses  and  rode  grimly 
on  toward  Magdala,  cantering  along  in  the  edge  of 
the  water  for  want  of  the  means  of  passing  over  it. 

How  the  pilgrims  abused  each  other!  Each  said 
it  was  the  other's  fault,  and  each  in  turn  denied  it. 
No  word  was  spoken  by  the  sinners — even  the 
mildest  sarcasm  might  have  been  dangerous  at  such 
a  time.  Sinners  that  have  been  kept  down  and  had 
examples  held  up  to  them,  and  suffered  frequent 
lectures,  and  been  so  put  upon  in  a  moral  way  and 
in  the  matter  of  going  slow  and  being  serious  and 
bottling  up  slang,  and  so  crowded  in  regard  to  the 
matter  of  being  proper  and  always  and  forever 
behaving,  that  their  lives  have  become  a  burden  to 

227 


MARK    TWAIN 

them,  would  not  lag  behind  pilgrims  at  such  a  time 
as  this,  and  wink  furtively,  and  be  joyful,  and  com- 
mit other  such  crimes — because  it  would  not  occur 
to  them  to  do  it.  Otherwise  they  would.  But  they 
did  do  it,  though — and  it  did  them  a  world  of  good 
to  hear  the  pilgrims  abuse  each  other,  too.  We 
took  an  unworthy  satisfaction  in  seeing  them  fall 
out,  now  and  then,  because  it  showed  that  they  were 
only  poor  human  people  like  us,  after  all. 

So  we  all  rode  down  to  Magdala,  while  the  gnash- 
ing of  teeth  waxed  and  waned  by  turns,  and  harsh 
words  troubled  the  holy  calm  of  Galilee. 

Lest  any  man  think  I  mean  to  be  ill-natured  when 
I  talk  about  our  pilgrims  as  I  have  been  talking,  I 
wish  to  say  in  all  sincerity  that  I  do  not.  I  would 
not  listen  to  lectures  from  men  I  did  not  like  and 
could  not  respect;  and  none  of  these  can  say  I  ever 
took  their  lectures  unkindly,  or  was  restive  under 
the  infliction,  or  failed  to  try  to  profit  by  what  they 
said  to  me.  They  are  better  men  than  I  am ;  I  can 
say  that  honestly;  they  are  good  friends  of  mine, 
too — and  besides,  if  they  did  not  wish  to  be  stirred 
up  occasionally  in  print,  why  in  the  mischief  did 
they  travel  with  me?  They  knew  me.  They  knew 
my  liberal  way — that  I  like  to  give  and  take — 
when  it  is  for  me  to  give  and  other  people  to  take. 
When  one  of  them  threatened  to  leave  me  in  Damas- 
cus when  I  had  the  cholera,  he  had  no  real  idea 
of  doing  it — I  know  his  passionate  nature  and  the 
good  impulses  that  underlie  it.  And  did  I  not 
overhear  Church,  another  pilgrim,  say  he  did  not 
care  who  went  or  who  stayed,  he  would  stand  by  me 

228 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

till  I  walked  out  of  Damascus  on  my  own  feet  or  was 
carried  out  in  a  coffin,  if  it  was  a  year?  And  do  I 
not  include  Church  every  time  I  abuse  the  pilgrims 
— and  would  I  be  likely  to  speak  ill-naturedly  of 
him?  I  wish  to  stir  them  up  and  make  them 
healthy;   that  is  all. 

We  had  left  Capernaum  behind  us.  It  was  only 
a  shapeless  ruin.  It  bore  no  semblance  to  a  town, 
and  had  nothing  about  it  to  suggest  that  it  had  ever 
been  a  town.  But  all  desolate  and  unpeopled  as  it 
was,  it  was  illustrious  ground.  From  it  sprang  that 
tree  of  Christianity  whose  broad  arms  overshadow 
so  many  distant  lands  to-day.  After  Christ  was 
tempted  of  the  devil  in  the  desert,  he  came  here  and 
began  his  teachings;  and  during  the  three  or  four 
years  he  lived  afterward,  this  place  was  his  home 
almost  altogether.  He  began  to  heal  the  sick,  and  his 
fame  soon  spread  so  widely  that  sufferers  came  from 
Syria  and  beyond  Jordan,  and  even  from  Jerusalem, 
several  days*  journey  away,  to  be  cured  of  their  dis- 
eases. Here  he  healed  the  centurion's  servant  and 
Peter's  mother-in-law,  and  multitudes  of  the  lame 
and  the  blind  and  persons  possessed  of  devils;  and 
here,  also,  he  raised  Jairus's  daughter  from  the  dead. 
He  went  into  a  ship  with  his  disciples,  and  when 
they  roused  him  from  sleep  in  the  midst  of  a  storm, 
he  quieted  the  winds  and  lulled  the  troubled  sea  to 
rest  with  his  voice.  He  passed  over  to  the  other 
side,  a  few  miles  away,  and  relieved  two  men  of 
devils,  which  passed  into  some  swine.  After  his 
return  he  called  Matthew  from  the  receipt  of  cus- 
toms, performed  some  cures,   and  created  scandal 

229 


MARK    TWAIN 

by  eating  with  publicans  and  sinners.  Then  he  went 
healing  and  teaching  through  Galilee,  and  even 
journeyed  to  Tyre  and  Sidon.  He  chose  the  twelve 
disciples,  and  sent  them  abroad  to  preach  the  new 
gospel.  He  worked  miracles  in  Bethsaida  and 
Chorazin — villages  two  or  three  miles  from  Caper- 
naum. It  was  near  one  of  them  that  the  miraculous 
draft  of  fishes  is  supposed  to  have  been  taken,  and 
it  was  in  the  desert  places  near  the  other  that  he  fed 
the  thousands  by  the  miracles  of  the  loaves  and 
fishes.  He  cursed  them  both,  and  Capernaum  also, 
for  not  repenting,  after  all  the  great  works  he  had 
done  in  their  midst,  and  prophesied  against  them. 
They  are  all  in  ruins  now — which  is  gratifying  to 
the  pilgrims,  for,  as  usual,  they  fit  the  eternal  words 
of  gods  to  the  evanescent  things  of  this  earth; 
Christ,  it  is  more  probable,  referred  to  the  people, 
not  their  shabby  villages  of  wigwams;  he  said  it 
would  be  sad  for  them  at  "the  Day  of  Judgment" — 
and  what  business  have  mud-hovels  at  the  Day  of 
Judgment?  it  would  not  affect  the  prophecy  in  the 
least — it  would  neither  prove  it  nor  disprove  it — if 
these  towns  were  splendid  cities  now  instead  of  the 
almost  vanished  ruins  they  are.  Christ  visited  Mag- 
dala,  which  is  near  by  Capernaum,  and  he  also 
visited  Cesarea  Philippi.  He  went  up  to  his  old 
home  at  Nazareth,  and  saw  his  brothers  Joses,  and 
Judas,  and  James,  and  Simon — those  persons  who, 
being  own  brothers  to  Jesus  Christ,  one  would  ex- 
pect to  hear  mentioned  sometimes,  yet  who  ever  saw 
their  names  in  a  newspaper  or  heard  them  from  a 
pulpit?     Who  ever  inquires  what  manner  of  youth? 

230 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

they  were;  and  whether  they  slept  with  Jesus, 
played  with  him  and  romped  about  him;  quarreled 
with  him  concerning  toys  and  trifles;  struck  him  in 
anger,  not  suspecting  what  he  was?  Who  ever 
wonders  what  they  thought  when  they  saw  him 
come  back  to  Nazareth  a  celebrity,  and  looked  long 
at  his  unfamiliar  face  to  make  sure,  and  then  said, 
"It  is  Jesus"?  Who  wonders  what  passed  in  their 
minds  when  they  saw  this  brother  (who  was  only  a 
brother  to  them,  however  much  he  might  be  to 
others  a  mysterious  stranger  who  was  a  god  and  had 
stood  face  to  face  with  God  above  the  clouds)  doing 
strange  miracles  with  crowds  of  astonished  people 
for  witnesses?  Who  wonders  if  the  brothers  of 
Jesus  asked  him  to  come  home  with  them,  and  said 
his  mother  and  his  sisters  were  grieved  at  his  long 
absence,  and  would  be  wild  with  delight  to  see  his 
face  again  ?  Who  ever  gives  a  thought  to  the  sisters 
of  Jesus  at  all? — yet  he  had  sisters;  and  memories 
of  them  must  have  stolen  into  his  mind  often  when 
he  was  ill  treated  among  strangers;  when  he  was 
homeless  and  said  he  had  not  where  to  lay  his  head ; 
when  all  deserted  him,  even  Peter,  and  he  stood 
alone  among  his  enemies. 

Christ  did  few  miracles  in  Nazareth,  and  stayed 
but  a  little  while.  The  people  said,  "This  the  Son 
of  God !  Why,  his  father  is  nothing  but  a  carpenter. 
We  know  the  family.  We  see  them  every  day.  Are 
not  his  brothers  named  so  and  so,  and  his  sisters  so 
and  so,  and  is  not  his  mother  the  person  they  call 
Mary?  This  is  absurd."  He  did  not  curse  his  home, 
but  he  shook  its  dust  from  his  feet  and  went  away. 

231 


MARK    TWAIN 

Capernaum  lies  close  to  the  edge  of  the  little  sea, 
in  a  small  plain  some  rive  miles  long  and  a  mile  or 
two  wide,  which  is  mildly  adorned  with  oleanders 
which  look  all  the  better  contrasted  with  the  bald 
hills  and  the  howling  deserts  which  surround  them, 
but  they  are  not  as  deliriously  beautiful  as  the  books 
paint  them.  If  one  be  calm  and  resolute  he  can 
look  upon  their  comeliness  and  live. 

One  of  the  most  astonishing  things  that  have  yet 
fallen  under  our  observation  is  the  exceedingly  small 
portion  of  the  earth  from  which  sprang  the  now 
flourishing  plant  of  Christianity.  The  longest  jour- 
ney our  Saviour  ever  performed  was  from  here  to 
Jerusalem — about  one  hundred  to  one  hundred  and 
twenty  miles.  The  next  longest  was  from  here  to 
Sidon — say  about  sixty  or  seventy  miles.  Instead 
of  being  wide  apart — as  American  appreciation  of 
distances  would  naturally  suggest — the  places  made 
most  particularly  celebrated  by  the  presence  of 
Christ  are  nearly  all  right  here  in  full  view,  and 
within  cannon-shot  of  Capernaum.  Leaving  out  two 
or  three  short  journeys  of  the  Saviour,  he  spent  his 
life,  preached  his  gospel,  and  performed  his  miracles 
within  a  compass  no  larger  than  an  ordinary  county  in 
the  United  States.  It  is  as  much  as  I  can  do  to  com- 
prehend this  stupefying  fact.  How  it  wears  a  man  out 
to  have  to  read  up  a  hundred  pages  of  history  every 
two  or  three  miles — for  verily  the  celebrated  localities 
of  Palestine  occur  that  close  together.  How  wearily, 
how  bewilderingly  they  swarm  about  your  path ! 

In  due  time  we  reached  the  ancient  village  of 
Magdala. 

232 


CHAPTER  XXI 

MAGDALA  is  not  a  beautiful  place.  It  is  thor- 
oughly Syrian,  and  that  is  to  say  that  it  is 
thoroughly  ugly,  and  cramped,  squalid,  uncomfort- 
able, and  filthy — just  the  style  of  cities  that  have 
adorned  the  country  since  Adam's  time,  as  all 
writers  have  labored  hard  to  prove,  and  have  suc- 
ceeded. The  streets  of  Magdala  are  anywhere  from 
three  to  six  feet  wide,  and  reeking  with  uncleanliness. 
The  houses  are  from  five  to  seven  feet  high,  and 
all  built  upon  one  arbitrary  plan — the  ungraceful 
form  of  a  dry-goods  box.  The  sides  are  daubed 
with  a  smooth  white  plaster,  and  tastefully  frescoed 
aloft  and  alow  with  disks  of  camel-dung  placed  there 
to  dry.  This  gives  the  edifice  the  romantic  appear- 
ance of  having  been  riddled  with  cannon-balls,  and 
imparts  to  it  a  very  warlike  aspect.  When  the 
artist  has  arranged  his  materials  with  an  eye  to  just 
proportion — the  small  and  the  large  flakes  in  alter- 
nate rows,  and  separated  by  carefully  considered 
intervals — I  know  of  nothing  more  cheerful  to  look 
upon  than  a  spirited  Syrian  fresco.  The  flat,  plas- 
tered roof  is  garnished  by  picturesque  stacks  of 
fresco  materials,  which,  having  become  thoroughly 
dried  and  cured,  are  placed  there  where  it  will  be 
convenient.     It  is  used  for  fuel.     There  is  no  timber 

233 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  any  consequence  in  Palestine — none  at  all  to 
waste  upon  fires — and  neither  are  there  any  mines 
of  coal.  If  my  description  has  been  intelligible, 
you  will  perceive,  now,  that  a  square,  flat-roofed 
hovel,  neatly  frescoed,  with  its  wall- tops  gallantly 
bastioned  and  turreted  with  dried  camel-refuse,  gives 
to  a  landscape  a  feature  that  is  exceedingly  festive 
and  picturesque,  especially  if  one  is  careful  to  re- 
member to  stick  in  a  cat  wherever,  about  the  prem- 
ises, there  is  room  for  a  cat  to  sit.  There  are  no 
windows  to  a  Syrian  hut,  and  no  chimneys.  When 
I  used  to  read  that  they  let  a  bedridden  man  down 
through  the  roof  of  a  house  in  Capernaum  to  get 
him  into  the  presence  of  the  Saviour,  I  generally 
had  a  three-story  brick  in  my  mind,  and  marveled 
that  they  did  not  break  his  neck  with  the  strange 
experiment.  I  perceive  now,  however,  that  they 
might  have  taken  him  by  the  heels  and  thrown  him 
clear  over  the  house  without  discommoding  him 
very  much.  Palestine  is  not  changed  any  since 
those  days,  in  manners,  customs,  architecture,  or 
people. 

As  we  rode  into  Magdala  not  a  soul  was  visible. 
But  the  ring  of  the  horses'  hoofs  roused  the  stupid 
population,  and  they  all  came  trooping  out — old 
men  and  old  women,  boys  and  girls,  the  blind,  the 
crazy,  and  the  crippled,  all  in  ragged,  soiled,  and 
scanty  raiment,  and  all  abject  beggars  by  nature,  in- 
stinct, and  education.  How  the  vermin-tortured 
vagabonds  did  swarm!  How  they  showed  their 
scars  and  sores,  and  piteously  pointed  to  their 
maimed  and  crooked  limbs,  and  begged  with  their 

234 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

pleading  eyes  for  charity !  We  had  invoked  a  spirit 
we  could  not  lay.  They  hung  to  the  horses'  tails, 
clung  to  their  manes  and  the  stirrups,  closed  in  on 
every  side  in  scorn  of  dangerous  hoofs — and  out  of 
their  infidel  throats,  with  one  accord,  burst  an 
agonizing  and  most  infernal  chorus:  "Howajji, 
bucksheesh!  howajji,  bucksheesh!  howajji,  buck- 
sheesh!  bucksheesh!  bucksheesh!"  I  never  was 
in  a  storm  like  that  before. 

As  we  paid  the  bucksheesh  out  to  sore-eyed 
children  and  brown,  buxom  girls  with  repulsively 
tattooed  lips  and  chins,  we  filed  through  the  town 
and  by  many  an  exquisite  fresco,  till  we  came  to  a 
bramble-infested  inclosure  and  a  Roman -looking  ruin 
which  had  been  the  veritable  dwelling  of  St.  Mary 
Magdalene,  the  friend  and  follower  of  Jesus.  The 
guide  believed  it,  and  so  did  I.  I  could  not  well  do 
otherwise,  with  the  house  right  there  before  my  eyes 
as  plain  as  day.  The  pilgrims  took  down  portions 
of  the  front  walls  for  specimens,  as  is  their  honored 
custom,  and  then  we  departed. 

We  are  camped  in  this  place,  now,  just  within  the 
city  walls  of  Tiberias.  We  went  into  the  town  be- 
fore nightfall  and  looked  at  its  people — we  cared 
nothing  about  its  houses.  Its  people  are  best  ex- 
amined at  a  distance.  They  are  particularly  un- 
comely Jews,  Arabs,  and  negroes.  Squalor  and 
poverty  are  the  pride  of  Tiberias.  The  young 
women  wear  their  dower  strung  upon  a  strong  wire 
that  curves  downward  from  the  top  of  the  head  to 
the  jaw — Turkish  silver  coins  which  they  have  raked 
together  or  inherited.     Most  of  these  maidens  were 

235 


MARK    TWAIN 

not  wealthy,  but  some  few  had  been  very  kindly 
dealt  with  by  fortune.  I  saw  heiresses  there  worth, 
in  their  own  right — worth,  well,  I  suppose  I  might 
venture  to  say,  as  much  as  nine  dollars  and  a  half. 
But  such  cases  are  rare.  When  you  come  across  one 
of  these,  she  naturally  puts  on  airs.  She  will  not 
ask  for  bucksheesh.  She  will  not  even  permit  of 
undue  familiarity.  She  assumes  a  crushing  dignity 
and  goes  on  serenely  practising  with  her  fine-tooth 
comb  and  quoting  poetry  just  the  same  as  if  you 
were  not  present  at  all.  Some  people  cannot  stand 
prosperity. 

They  say  that  the  long-nosed,  lanky,  dyspeptic- 
looking  body-snatchers,  with  the  indescribable  hats 
on,  and  a,  long  curl  dangling  down  in  front  of  each 
ear,  are  the  old,  familiar,  self-righteous  Pharisees  we 
read  of  in  the  Scriptures.  Verily,  they  look  it. 
Judging  merely  by  their  general  style,  and  without 
other  evidence,  one  might  easily  suspect  that  self- 
righteousness  was  their  specialty. 

From  various  authorities  I  have  culled  information 
concerning  Tiberias.  It  was  built  by  Herod  Anti- 
pas,  the  murderer  of  John  the  Baptist,  and  named 
after  the  Emperor  Tiberius.  It  is  believed  that  it 
stands  upon  the  site  of  what  must  have  been,  ages 
ago,  a  city  of  considerable  architectural  pretensions, 
judging  by  the  fine  porphyry  pillars  that  are  scat- 
tered through  Tiberias  and  down  the  lake-shore 
southward.  These  were  fluted  once,  and  yet,  al- 
though the  stone  is  about  as  hard  as  iron,  the  flutings 
are  almost  worn  away.  These  pillars  are  small,  and 
doubtless   the   edifices   they   adorned   were   distin- 

236 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

guished  more  for  elegance  than  grandeur.  This 
modern  town — Tiberias — is  only  mentioned  in  the 
New  Testament;   never  in  the  Old. 

The  Sanhedrim  met  here  last,  and  for  three  hun- 
dred years  Tiberias  was  the  metropolis  of  the  Jews 
in  Palestine.  It  is  one  of  the  four  holy  cities  of  the 
Israelites,  and  is  to  them  what  Mecca  is  to  the 
Mohammedan  and  Jerusalem  to  the  Christian.  It 
has  been  the  abiding-place  of  many  learned  and 
famous  Jewish  rabbins.  They  He  buried  here,  and 
near  them  lie  also  twenty-five  thousand  of  their 
faith  who  traveled  far  to  be  near  them  while  they 
lived  and  lie  with  them  when  they  died.  The  great 
Rabbi  Ben  Israel  spent  three  years  here  in  the  early 
part  of  the  third  century.     He  is  dead,  now. 

The  celebrated  Sea  of  Galilee  is  not  so  large  a  sea 
as  Lake  Tahoe  1  by  a  good  deal — it  is  just  about 
two-thirds  as  large.  And  when  we  come  to  speak 
oi  beauty,  this  sea  is  no  more  to  be  compared  to 
Tahoe  than  a  meridian  of  longitude  is  to  a  rainbow. 
The  dim  waters  of  this  pool  cannot  suggest  the  limpid 
brilliancy  of  Tahoe;  these  low,  shaven,  yellow  hil- 
locks of  rocks  and  sand,  so  devoid  of  perspective, 
cannot  suggest  the  grand  peaks  that  compass  Tahoe 
like  a  wall,  and  whose  ribbed  and  chasmed  fronts 
are  clad  with  stately  pines  that  seem  to  grow  small 
and  smaller  as  they  climb,  till  one  might  fancy  them 
reduced  to  weeds  and  shrubs  far  upward,  where  they 

1 1  measure  all  lakes  by  Tahoe,  partly  because  I  am  far  more 
familiar  with  it  than  with  any  other,  and  partly  because  I  have 
such  a  high  admiration  for  it  and  such  a  world  of  pleasant  recol- 
lections of  it,  that  it  is  very  nearly  impossible  for  me  to  speak  of 
lakes  and  not  mention  it. 

237 


MARK    TWAIN 

join  the  everlasting  snows.  Silence  and  solitude 
brood  over  Tahoe;  and  silence  and  solitude  brood 
also  over  this  lake  of  Gennesaret.  But  the  solitude 
of  the  one  is  as  cheerful  and  fascinating  as  the  soli- 
tude of  the  other  is  dismal  and  repellent. 

In  the  early  morning  one  watches  the  silent  battle 
of  dawn  and  darkness  upon  the  waters  of  Tahoe 
with  a  placid  interest;  but  when  the  shadows  sulk 
away  and  one  by  one  the  hidden  beauties  of  the 
shore  unfold  themselves  in  the  full  splendor  of 
noon ;  when  the  still  surface  is  belted  like  a  rainbow 
with  broad  bars  of  blue  and  green  and  white,  half 
the  distance  from  circumference  to  center;  when,  in 
the  lazy  summer  afternoon,  he  lies  in  a  boat,  far  out 
to  where  the  dead  blue  of  the  deep  water  begins, 
and  smokes  the  pipe  of  peace  and  idly  winks  at  the 
distant  crags  and  patches  of  snow  from  under  his 
cap-brim;  when  the  boat  drifts  shoreward  to  the 
white  water,  and  he  lolls  over  the  gunwale  and  gazes 
by  the  hour  down  through  the  crystal  depths  and 
notes  the  colors  of  the  pebbles  and  reviews  the  finny 
armies  gliding  in  procession  a  hundred  feet  below; 
when  at  night  he  sees  moon  and  stars,  mountain 
ridges  feathered  with  pines,  jutting  white  capes,  bold 
promontories,  grand  sweeps  of  rugged  scenery 
topped  with  bald,  glimmering  peaks,  all  magnifi- 
cently pictured  in  the  polished  mirror  of  the  lake, 
in  richest,  softest  detail,  the  tranquil  interest  that 
was  born  with  the  morning  deepens  and  deepens,  by 
sure  degrees,  till  it  culminates  at  last  in  resistless 
fascination ! 

It  is  solitude,  for  birds  and  squirrels  on  the  shore 

238 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  fishes  in  the  water  are  all  the  creatures  that  are 
near  to  make  it  otherwise,  but  it  is  not  the  sort  of 
solitude  to  make  one  dreary.  Come  to  Galilee  for 
that.  If  these  unpeopled  deserts,  these  rusty  mounds 
of  barrenness,  that  never,  never,  never  do  shake  the 
glare  from  their  harsh  outlines,  and  fade  and  faint 
into  vague  perspective;  that  melancholy  ruin  of 
Capernaum ;  this  stupid  village  of  Tiberias,  slumber- 
ing under  its  six  funereal  plumes  of  palms;  yonder 
desolate  declivity  where  the  swine  of  the  miracle 
ran  down  into  the  sea,  and  doubtless  thought  it  was 
better  to  swallow  a  devil  or  two  and  get  drowned  into 
the  bargain  than  have  to  live  longer  in  such  a  place ; 
this  cloudless,  blistering  sky;  this  solemn,  sailless, 
tintless  lake,  reposing  within  its  rim  of  yellow  hills 
and  low,  steep  banks,  and  looking  just  as  expression- 
less and  unpoetical  (when  we  leave  its  sublime  history 
out  of  the  question)  as  any  metropolitan  reservoir 
in  Christendom — if  these  things  are  not  food  for 
rock  me  to  sleep,  mother,  none  exist,  I  think. 

But  I  should  not  offer  the  evidence  for  the  prosecu- 
tion and  leave  the  defense  unheard.  Wm.  C.  Grimes 
deposes  as  follows : 

We  had  taken  ship  to  go  over  to  the  other  side.  The  sea 
was  not  more  than  six  miles  wide.  Of  the  beauty  of  the  scene, 
however,  I  cannot  say  enough,  nor  can  I  imagine  where  those 
travelers  carried  their  eyes  who  have  described  the  scenery  of 
the  lake  as  tame  or  uninteresting.  The  first  great  characteristic 
of  it  is  the  deep  basin  in  which  it  lies.  This  is  from  three 
to  four  hundred  feet  deep  on  all  sides  except  at  the  lower  end, 
and  the  sharp  slope  of  the  banks,  which  are  all  of  the  richest  green, 
is  broken  and  diversified  by  the  wadys  and  watercourses  which 
work  their  way  down  through  the  sides  of  the  basin,  forming 

239 


MARK    TWAIN 

dark  chasms  or  light  sunny  valleys.  Near  Tiberias  these  banks 
are  rocky,  and  ancient  sepulchers  open  in  them,  with  their 
doors  toward  the  water.  They  selected  grand  spots,  as  did 
the  Egyptians  of  old,  for  burial  places,  as  if  they  designed  that 
when  the  voice  of  God  should  reach  the  sleepers  they  should 
walk  forth  and  open  their  eyes  on  scenes  of  glorious  beauty. 
On  the  east,  the  wild  and  desolate  mountains  contrast  finely 
with  the  deep-blue  lake;  and  toward  the  north,  sublime  and 
majestic,  Hermon  looks  down  on  the  sea,  lifting  his  white  crown 
to  heaven  with  the  pride  of  a  hill  that  has  seen  the  departing 
footsteps  of  a  hundred  generations.  On  the  northeast  shore 
of  the  sea  was  a  single  tree,  and  this  is  the  only  tree  of  any 
size  visible  from  the  water  of  the  lake,  except  a  few  lonely  palms 
in  the  city  of  Tiberias,  and  by  its  solitary  position  attracts 
more  attention  than  would  a  forest.  The  whole  appearance  of 
trie  scene  is  precisely  what  we  would  expect  and  desire  the 
scenery  of  Gennesaret  to  be,  grand  beauty,  but  quiet  calm.  The 
very  mountains  are  calm. 

It  is  an  ingeniously  written  description,  and  well 
calculated  to  deceive.  But  if  the  paint  and  the  rib- 
bons and  the  flowers  be  stripped  from  it,  a  skeleton 
will  be  found  beneath. 

So  stripped,  there  remains  a  lake  six  miles  wide 
and  neutral  in  color;  with  steep  green  banks,  unre- 
lieved by  shrubbery;  at  one  end  bare,  unsightly 
rocks,  with  (almost  invisible)  holes  in  them  of  no 
consequence  to  the  picture;  eastward,  "wild  and 
desolate  mountains"  (low,  desolate  hills,  he  should 
have  said) ;  in  the  north,  a  mountain  called  Hermon, 
with  snow  on  it;  peculiarity  of  the  picture,  "calm- 
ness"; its  prominent  feature,  one  tree. 

No  ingenuity  could  make  such  a  picture  beautiful 
—  to  one's  actual  vision. 

I  claim  the  right  to  correct  misstatements,  and 
have  so  corrected  the  color  of  the  water  in  the  above 

240 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

recapitulation.  The  waters  of  Gennesaret  are  of  an 
exceedingly  mild  blue,  even  from  a  high  elevation 
and  a  distance  of  five  miles.  Close  at  hand  (the  wit- 
ness was  sailing  on  the  lake),  it  is  hardly  proper  to 
call  them  blue  at  all,  much  less  "deep"  blue.  I 
wish  to  state,  also,  not  as  a  correction,  but  as  a 
matter  of  opinion,  that  Mount  Hermon  is  not  a 
striking  or  picturesque  mountain,  by  any  means, 
being  too  near  the  height  of  its  immediate  neighbors 
to  be  so.  That  is  all.  I  do  not  object  to  the  witness 
dragging  a  mountain  forty-five  miles  to  help  the 
scenery  under  consideration,  because  it  is  entirely 
proper  to  do  it,  and,  besides,  the  picture  needs  it. 
"C.  W.  E."  (of  Life  in  the  Holy  Land)  deposes 
as  follows : 

A  beautiful  sea  lies  unbosomed  among  the  Galilean  hills,  in 
the  midst  of  that  land  once  possessed  by  Zebulon  and  Naphtali, 
Asher  and  Dan.  The  azure  of  the  sky  penetrates  the  depths  of 
the  lake,  and  the  waters  are  sweet  and  cool.  On  the  west, 
stretch  broad  fertile  plains;  on  the  north  the  rocky  shores  rise 
step  by  step  until  in  the  far  distance  tower  the  snowy  heights 
of  Hermon;  on  the  east  through  a  misty  veil  are  seen  the  high 
plains  of  Perea,  which  stretch  away  in  rugged  mountains 
leading  the  mind  by  varied  paths  toward  Jerusalem  the  Holy. 
Flowers  bloom  in  this  terrestrial  paradise,  once  beautiful  and 
verdant  with  waving  trees;  singing  birds  enchant  the  ear;  the 
turtle-dove  soothes  with  its  soft  note;  the  crested  lark  sends 
up  its  song  toward  heaven,  and  the  grave  and  stately  stork 
inspires  the  mind  with  thought,  and  leads  it  on  to  meditation 
and  repose.  Life  here  was  once  idyllic,  charming;  here  were 
once  no  rich,  no  poor,  no  high,  no  low.  It  was  a  world  of  ease, 
simplicity,  and  beauty;  now  it  is  a  scene  of  desolation  and 
misery. 

This  is  not  an  ingenious  picture.  It  is  the  worst 
I  ever  saw.     It  describes  in  elaborate  detail  what  it 

241 


MARK    TWAIN 

terms  a  "terrestrial  paradise,"  and  closes  with  the 
startling  information  that  this  paradise  is  "a  scene 
of  desolation  and  misery." 

I  have  given  two  fair,  average  specimens  of  the 
character  of  the  testimony  offered  by  the  majority 
of  the  writers  who  visit  this  region.  One  says,  "Of 
the  beauty  of  the  scene  I  cannot  say  enough,"  and 
then  proceeds  to  cover  up  with  a  woof  of  glittering 
sentences  a  thing  which,  when  stripped  for  inspec- 
tion, proves  to  be  only  an  unobtrusive  basin  of  water, 
some  mountainous  desolation,  and  one  tree.  The 
other,  after  a  conscientious  effort  to  build  a  terres- 
trial paradise  out  of  the  same  materials,  with  the 
addition  of  a  "grave  and  stately  stork,"  spoils  it  all 
by  blundering  upon  the  ghastly  truth  at  the  last. 

Nearly  every  book  concerning  Galilee  and  its  lake 
describes  the  scenery  as  beautiful.  No — not  always 
so  straightforward  as  that.  Sometimes  the  impres- 
sion intentionally  conveyed  is  that  it  is  beautiful,  at 
the  same  time  that  the  author  is  careful  not  to  say 
that  it  is,  in  plain  Saxon.  But  a  careful  analysis  of 
these  descriptions  will  show  that  the  materials  of 
which  they  are  formed  are  not  individually  beautiful 
and  cannot  be  wrought  into  combinations  that  are 
beautiful.  The  veneration  and  the  affection  which 
some  of  these  men  felt  for  the  scenes  they  were 
speaking  of  heated  their  fancies  and  biased  their 
judgment;  but  the  pleasant  falsities  they  wrote  were 
full  of  honest  sincerity,  at  any  rate.  Others  wrote 
as  they  did,  because  they  feared  it  would  be  unpop- 
ular to  write  otherwise.  Others  were  hypocrites  and 
deliberately  meant  to  deceive.     Any  of  them  would 

242 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

say  in  a  moment,  if  asked,  that  it  was  always  right 
and  always  best  to  tell  the  truth.  They  would  say 
that,  at  any  rate,  if  they  did  not  perceive  the  drift 
of  the  question. 

But  why  should  not  the  truth  be  spoken  of  this 
region?  Is  the  truth  harmful?  Has  it  ever  needed 
to  hide  its  face?  God  made  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and 
its  surroundings  as  they  are.  Is  it  the  province  of 
Mr.  Grimes  to  improve  upon  the  work? 

I  am  sure,  from  the  tenor  of  books  I  have  read, 
that  many  wTho  have  visited  this  land  in  years  gone 
by,  were  Presbyterians,  and  came  seeking  evidences 
in  support  of  their  particular  creed;  they  found  a 
Presbyterian  Palestine,  and  they  had  already  made 
up  their  minds  to  find  no  other,  though  possibly 
they  did  not  know  it,  being  blinded  by  their  zeal. 
Others  were  Baptists,  seeking  Baptist  evidences  and 
a  Baptist  Palestine.  Others  were  Catholics,  Metho- 
dists, Episcopalians,  seeking  evidences  indorsing  their 
several  creeds,  and  a  Catholic,  a  Methodist,  an 
Episcopalian  Palestine.  Honest  as  these  men's  in- 
tentions may  have  been,  they  were  full  of  partialities 
and  prejudices,  they  entered  the  country  with  their 
verdicts  already  prepared,  and  they  could  no  more 
write  dispassionately  and  impartially  about  it  than 
they  could  about  their  own  wives  and  children. 
Our  pilgrims  have  brought  their  verdicts  with  them. 
They  have  shown  it  in  their  conversation  ever  since 
we  left  Beirout.  I  can  almost  tell,  in  set  phrase, 
what  they  will  say  when  they  see  Tabor,  Nazareth, 
Jericho,  and  Jerusalem — because  I  have  the  books 
they  will  "smouch"  their  ideas  from.     These  authors 

243 


MARK    TWAIN 

write  pictures  and  frame  rhapsodies,  and  lesser  men 
follow  and  see  with  the  author's  eyes  instead  of  their 
own,  and  speak  with  his  tongue.  What  the  pilgrims 
said  at  Cesarea  Philippi  surprised  me  with  its  wis- 
dom. I  found  it  afterward  in  Robinson.  What 
they  said  when  Gennesaret  burst  upon  their  vision 
charmed  me  with  its  grace.  I  find  it  in  Mr.  Thomp- 
son's Land  and  the  Book.  They  have  spoken  often, 
in  happily  worded  language  which  never  varied,  of 
how  they  mean  to  lay  their  weary  heads  upon  a 
stone  at  Bethel,  as  Jacob  did,  and  close  their  dim 
eyes,  and  dream,  perchance,  of  angels  descending  out 
of  heaven  on  a  ladder.  It  wras  very  pretty.  But  I 
have  recognized  the  weary  head  and  the  dim  eyes, 
finally.  They  borrowed  the  idea — and  the  words 
— and  the  construction — and  the  punctuation — f rom 
Grimes.  The  pilgrims  will  tell  of  Palestine,  when 
they  get  home,  not  as  it  appeared  to  them,  but  as  it 
appeared  to  Thompson  and  Robinson  and  Grimes— - 
with  the  tints  varied  to  suit  each  pilgrim's  creed. 

Pilgrims,  sinners,  and  Arabs  are  all  abed,  now,  and 
the  camp  is  still.  Labor  in  loneliness  is  irksome. 
Since  I  made  my  last  few  notes,  I  have  been  sitting 
outside  the  tent  for  half  an  hour.  Night  is  the  time 
to  see  Galilee.  Gennesaret  under  these  lustrous  stars 
has  nothing  repulsive  about  it.  Gennesaret  with  the 
glittering  reflections  of  the  constellations  flecking  its 
surface,  almost  makes  me  regret  that  I  ever  saw  the 
rude  glare  of  the  day  upon  it.  Its  history  and  its 
associations  are  its  chiefest  charm,  in  any  eyes,  and 
the  spells  they  weave  are  feeble  in  the  searching  light 
of  the  sun.     Then,  we  scarcely  feel  the  fetters.     Our 

244 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

thoughts  wander  constantly  to  the  practical  concerns 
of  life,  and  refuse  to  dwell  upon  things  that  seem 
vague  and  unreal.  But  when  the  day  is  done,  even 
the  most  unimpressible  must  yield  to  the  dreamy  in- 
fluences of  this  tranquil  starlight.  The  old  traditions 
of  the  place  steal  upon  his  memory  and  haunt  his 
reveries,  and  then  his  fancy  clothes  all  sights  and 
sounds  with  the  supernatural.  In  the  lapping  of  the 
waves  upon  the  beach,  he  hears  the  dip  of  ghostly 
oars ;  in  the  secret  noises  of  the  night  he  hears  spirit 
voices ;  in  the  soft  sweep  of  the  breeze,  the  rush  of 
invisible  wings.  Phantom  ships  are  on  the  sea,  the 
dead  of  twenty  centuries  come  forth  from  the  tombs, 
and  in  the  dirges  of  the  night  wind  the  songs  of  old 
forgotten  ages  find  utterance  again. 

In  the  starlight,  Galilee  has  no  boundaries  but  the 
broad  compass  of  the  heavens,  and  is  a  theater  meet 
for  great  events ;  meet  for  the  birth  of  a  religion  able 
to  save  a  world;  and  meet  for  the  stately  Figure 
appointed  to  stand  upon  its  stage  and  proclaim  its 
high  decrees.  But  in  the  sunlight,  one  says:  Is  it 
for  the  deeds  which  were  done  and  the  words  wThich 
were  spoken  in  this  little  acre  of  rocks  and  sand 
eighteen  centuries  gone,  that  the  bells  are  ringing 
to-day  in  the  remote  islands  of  the  sea  and  far  and 
wide  over  continents  that  clasp  the  circumference  of 
the  huge  globe  ? 

One  can  comprehend  it  only  when  night  has  hidden 
all  incongruities  and  created  a  theater  proper  for  so 
grand  a  drama. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

WE  took  another  swim  in  the  Sea  of  Galilee  at 
twilight  yesterday,  and  another  at  sunrise  this 
morning.  We  have  not  sailed,  but  three  swims  are 
equal  to  a  sail,  are  they  not?  There  were  plenty  of 
fish  visible  in  the  water,  but  we  have  no  outside  aids 
in  this  pilgrimage  but  Tent  Life  in  the  Holy  Land, 
The  Land  and  the  Book,  and  other  literature  of 
like  description — no  fishing-tackle.  There  were  no 
fish  to  be  had  in  the  village  of  Tiberias.  True, 
we  saw  two  or  three  vagabonds  mending  their 
nets,  but  never  trying  to  catch  anything  with  them. 

We  did  not  go  to  the  ancient  warm  baths  two 
miles  below  Tiberias.  I  had  no  desire  in  the  world 
to  go  there.  This  seemed  a  little  strange,  and 
prompted  me  to  try  to  discover  what  the  cause  of 
this  unreasonable  indifference  was.  It  turned  out 
to  be  simply  because  Pliny  mentions  them.  I  have 
conceived  a  sort  of  unwarrantable  unfriendliness 
toward  Pliny  and  St.  Paul,  because  it  seems  as  if  I 
can  never  ferret  out  a  place  that  I  can  have  to  my- 
self. It  always  and  eternally  transpires  that  St.  Paul 
has  been  to  that  place,  and  Pliny  has  "mentioned  "  it. 

In  the  early  morning  we  mounted  and  started. 
And  then  a  weird  apparition  marched  forth  at  the 
head  of  the  procession — a  pirate,  I  thought,  if  ever 

246 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

a  pirate  dwelt  upon  land.  It  was  a  tall  Arab,  as 
swarthy  as  an  Indian,  young — say  thirty  years  of 
age.  On  his  head  he  had  closely  bound  a  gorgeous 
yellow  and  red  striped  silk  scarf,  whose  ends,  lavishly 
fringed  with  tassels,  hung  down  between  his  shoul- 
ders and  dallied  with  the  wind.  From  his  neck  to 
his  knees,  in  ample  folds,  a  robe  swept  down  that 
was  a  very  star-spangled  banner  of  curved  and 
sinuous  bars  of  black  and  white.  Out  of  his  back, 
somewhere,  apparently,  the  long  stem  of  a  chibouk 
projected,  and  reached  far  above  his  right  shoulder. 
Athwart  his  back,  diagonally,  and  extending  high 
above  his  left  shoulder,  was  an  Arab  gun  of  Saladin's 
time,  that  was  splendid  with  silver  plating  from  stock 
clear  up  to  the  end  of  its  measureless  stretch  of 
barrel.  About  his  waist  was  bound  many  and  many 
a  yard  of  elaborately  figured  but  sadly  tarnished  stuff 
that  came  from  sumptuous  Persia,  and  among  the 
baggy  folds  in  front  the  sunbeams  glinted  from  a 
formidable  battery  of  old  brass-mounted  horse-pistols 
and  the  gilded  hilts  of  bloodthirsty  knives.  There 
were  holsters  for  more  pistols  appended  to  the 
wonderful  stack  of  long-haired  goatskins  and  Persian 
carpets,  which  the  man  had  been  taught  to  regard 
in  the  light  of  a  saddle;  and  down  among  the  pen- 
dulous rank  of  vast  tassels  that  swung  from  that  sad- 
dle, and  clanging  against  the  iron  shovel  of  a  stirrup 
that  propped  the  warrior's  knees  up  toward  his  chin, 
was  a  crooked,  silver-clad  simitar  of  such  awful 
dimensions  and  such  implacable  expression  that  no 
man  might  hope  to  look  upon  it  and  not  shudder 
The  fringed  and  bedizened  prince  whose  privilege  it 

247 


MARK    TWAIN 

is  to  ride  the  pony  and  lead  the  elephant  into  a 
country  village  is  poor  and  naked  compared  to  this 
chaos  of  paraphernalia,  and  the  happy  vanity  of  the 
one  is  the  very  poverty  of  satisfaction  compared  to 
the  majestic  serenity,  the  overwhelming  complacency 
of  the  other. 

"Who  is  this?  What  is  this?"  That  was  the 
trembling  inquiry  all  down  the  line. 

"Our  guard!  From  Galilee  to  the  birthplace  of 
the  Saviour,  the  country  is  infested  with  fierce 
Bedouins,  whose  sole  happiness  it  is,  in  this  life,  to 
cut  and  stab  and  mangle  and  murder  unoffending 
Christians.     Allah  be  with  us!" 

"Then  hire  a  regiment!  Would  you  send  us  out 
among  these  desperate  hordes,  with  no  salvation  in 
our  utmost  need  but  this  old  turret?" 

The  dragoman  laughed — not  at  the  f  acetiousness  of 
the  simile,  for  verily,  that  guide  or  that  courier  or 
that  dragoman  never  yet  lived  upon  earth  who  had 
in  him  the  faintest  appreciation  of  a  joke,  even 
though  that  joke  were  so  broad  and  so  ponderous 
that  if  it  fell  on  him  it  would  flatten  him  out  like  a 
postage-stamp — the  dragoman  laughed,  and  then, 
emboldened  by  some  thought  that  was  in  his  brain, 
no  doubt,  proceeded  to  extremities  and  winked. 

In  straits  like  these,  when  a  man  laughs,  it  is  en- 
couraging; when  he  winks,  it  is  positively  reassuring. 
He  finally  intimated  that  one  guard  would  be  suffi- 
cient to  protect  us,  but  that  that  one  was  an  absolute 
necessity.  It  was  because  of  the  moral  weight  his 
awful  panoply  would  have  with  the  Bedouins.  Then 
I  said  we  didn't  want  any  guard  at  all.     If  one  fan- 

248 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

tastic  vagabond  could  protect  eight  armed  Christians 
and  a  pack  of  Arab  servants  from  all  harm,  surely 
that  detachment  could  protect  themselves.  He 
shook  his  head  doubtfully.  Then  I  said,  just  think 
of  how  it  looks — think  of  how  it  would  read,  to  self- 
reliant  Americans,  that  we  went  sneaking  through 
this  deserted  wilderness  under  the  protection  of  this 
masquerading  Arab,  who  would  break  his  neck  get- 
ting out  of  the  country  if  a  man  that  was  a  man  ever 
started  after  him.  It  was  a  mean,  low,  degrading 
position.  Why  were  we  ever  told  to  bring  navy  re- 
volvers with  us  if  we  had  to  be  protected  at  last  by 
this  infamous  star-spangled  scum  of  the  desert? 
These  appeals  were  vain — the  dragoman  only 
smiled  and  shook  his  head. 

I  rode  to  the  front  and  struck  up  an  acquaintance 
with  King  Solomon-in-all-his-glory,  and  got  him  to 
show  me  his  lingering  eternity  of  a  gun.  It  had  a 
rusty  flintlock ;  it  was  ringed  and  barred  and  plated 
with  silver  from  end  to  end,  but  it  was  as  desperately 
out  of  the  perpendicular  as  are  the  billiard  cues  of 
\g  that  one  finds  yet  in  service  in  the  ancient  mining- 
camps  of  California.  The  muzzle  was  eaten  by  the 
rust  of  centuries  into  a  ragged  filigree-work,  like 
the  end  of  a  burnt-out  stove-pipe.  I  shut  one  eye 
and  peered  within — it  was  flaked  with  iron  rust  like 
an  old  steamboat -boiler.  I  borrowed  the  ponderous 
pistols  and  snapped  them.  They  were  rusty  inside, 
too — had  not  been  loaded  for  a  generation.  I  went 
back,  full  of  encouragement,  and  reported  to  the 
guide,  and  asked  him  to  discharge  this  dismantled 
fortress.     It   came   out,   then.     This  fellow  was  a 

249 


MARK    TWAIN 

retainer  of  the  Sheik  of  Tiberias.  He  was  a  source 
of  Government  revenue.  He  was  to  the  Empire  of 
Tiberias  what  the  customs  are  to  America.  The 
Sheik  imposed  guards  upon  travelers  and  charged 
them  for  it.  It  is  a  lucrative  source  of  emolument, 
and  sometimes  brings  into  the  national  treasury  as 
much  as  thirty -five  or  forty  dollars  a  year. 

I  knew  the  warrior's  secret  now;  I  knew  the  hol- 
low vanity  of  his  rusty  trumpery,  and  despised  his 
asinine  complacency.  I  told  on  him,  and  with  reck- 
less daring  the  cavalcade  rode  straight  ahead  into 
the  perilous  solitudes  of  the  desert,  and  scorned  his 
frantic  warnings  of  the  mutilation  and  death  that 
hovered  about  them  on  every  side. 

Arrived  at  an  elevation  of  twelve  hundred  feet 
above  the  lake  (I  ought  to  mention  that  the  lake  lies 
six  hundred  feet  below  the  level  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean— no  traveler  ever  neglects  to  flourish  that 
fragment  of  news  in  his  letters),  as  bald  and  un- 
thrilling  a  panorama  as  any  land  can  afford,  perhaps, 
was  spread  out  before  us.  Yet  it  was  so  crowded 
with  historical  interest,  that  if  all  the  pages  that  have 
been  written  about  it  were  spread  upon  its  surface, 
they  would  flag  it  from  horizon  to  horizon  like  a 
pavement.  Among  the  localities  comprised  in  this 
view,  were  Mount  Hermon;  the  hills  that  border 
Cesarea  Philippi,  Dan,  the  Sources  of  the  Jordan 
and  the  Waters  of  Merom;  Tiberias;  the  Sea  of 
Galilee;  Joseph's  Pit;  Capernaum;  Bethsaida;  the 
supposed  scenes  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the 
feeding  of  the  multitudes  and  the  miraculous  draft 
of  fishes ;  the  declivity  down  which  the  swine  ran  to 

250 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  sea;  the  entrance  and  the  exit  of  the  Jordan; 
Safed,  "the  city  set  upon  a  hill,"  one  of  the  four 
holy  cities  of  the  Jews,  and  the  place  where  they 
believe  the  real  Messiah  will  appear  when  he  comes 
to  redeem  the  world;  part  of  the  battle-field  of 
Hat  tin,  where  the  knightly  Crusaders  fought  their 
last  fight,  and  in  a  blaze  of  glory  passed  from  the 
stage  and  ended  their  splendid  career  forever; 
Mount  Tabor,  the  traditional  scene  of  the  Lord's 
Transfiguration.  And  down  toward  the  southeast 
lay  a  landscape  that  suggested  to  my  mind  a  quota- 
tion (imperfectly  remembered,  no  doubt): 

The  Ephraimites,  not  being  called  upon  to  share  in  the  rich 
spoils  of  the  Ammonitish  war,  assembled  a  mighty  host  to  fight 
against  Jeptha,  Judge  of  Israel;  who  being  apprised  of  their 
approach,  gathered  together  the  men  of  Israel  and  gave  them 
battle  and  put  them  to  flight.  To  make  his  victory  the  more 
secure,  he  stationed  guards  at  the  different  fords  and  passages 
of  the  Jordan,  with  instructions  to  let  none  pass  who  could  not 
say  Shibboleth.  The  Ephraimites,  being  of  a  different  tribe, 
could  not  frame  to  pronounce  the  word  aright,  but  called  it 
Sibboleth,  which  proved  them  enemies  and  cost  them  their 
lives;  wherefore  forty  and  two  thousand  fell  at  th<5  different 
fords  and  passages  of  the  Jordan  that  day. 

We  jogged  along  peacefully  over  the  great  caravan 
route  from  Damascus  to  Jerusalem  and  Egypt,  past 
Lubia  and  other  Syrian  hamlets,  perched  in  the 
unvarying  style,  upon  the  summit  of  steep  mounds 
and  hills,  and  fenced  round  about  with  giant  cactuses 
(the  sign  of  worthless  land),  with  prickly  pears  upon 
them  like  hams,  and  came  at  last  to  the  battle-field  of 
Hattin. 

It  is  a  grand,  irregular  plateau,  and  looks  as  if  it 
251 


MARK    TWAIN 

might  have  been  created  for  a  battle-field.  Here 
the  peerless  Saladin  met  the  Christian  host  some 
3even  hundred  years  ago,  and  broke  their  power  in 
Palestine  for  all  time  to  come.  There  had  long 
been  a  truce  between  the  opposing  forces,  but  ac- 
cording to  the  Guide-Book,  Raynauld  of  Chatillon, 
Lord  of  Kerak,  broke  it  by  plundering  a  Damascus 
caravan,  and  refusing  to  give  up  either  the  merchants 
or  their  goods  when  Saladin  demanded  them.  This 
conduct  of  an  insolent  petty  chieftain  stung  the 
Sultan  to  the  qui'ck,  and  he  swore  that  he  would 
slaughter  Raynauld  with  his  own  hand,  no  matter 
how,  or  when,  or  where  he  found  him.  Both 
armies  prepared  for  war.  Under  the  weak  King  of 
Jerusalem  was  the  very  flower  of  the  Christian 
chivalry.  He  foolishly  compelled  them  to  undergo 
a  long,  exhausting  march,  in  the  scorching  sun,  and 
then,  without  water  or  other  refreshment,  ordered 
them  to  encamp  in  this  open  plain.  The  splendidly 
mounted  masses  of  Moslem  soldiers  swept  round  the 
north  end  of  Gennesaret,  burning  and  destroying  as 
they  came,  and  pitched  their  camp  in  front  of  the 
opposing  lines.  At  dawn  the  terrific  fight  began. 
Surrounded  on  all  sides  by  the  Sultan's  swarming 
battalions,  the  Christian  Knights  fought  on  without 
a  hope  for  their  lives.  They  fought  with  desperate 
valor,  but  to  no  purpose;  the  odds  of  heat  and 
numbers  and  consuming  thirst  were  too  great  against 
them.  Toward  the  middle  of  the  day  the  bravest 
of  their  band  cut  their  way  through  the  Moslem 
ranks  and  gained  the  summit  of  a  little  hill,  and 
there,  hour  after  hour,  they  closed  around  the  banner 

252 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

of  the  Cross,  and  beat  back  the  charging  squadrons 
of  the  enemy. 

But  the  doom  of  the  Christian  power  was  sealed. 
Sunset  found  Saladin  Lord  of  Palestine,  the  Chris- 
tian chivalry  strewn  in  heaps  upon  the  field,  and  the 
King  of  Jerusalem,  the  Grand  Master  of  the  Tem- 
plars, and  Raynauld  of  Chatillon,  captives  in  the 
Sultan's  tent.  Saladin  treated  two  of  the  prisoners 
with  princely  courtesy,  and  ordered  refreshments  to 
be  set  before  them.  When  the  King  handed  an  iced 
sherbet  to  Chatillon,  the  Sultan  said,  'Tt  is  thou 
that  givest  it  to  him,  not  I."  He  remembered  his 
oath,  and  slaughtered  the  hapless  Knight  of  Chatillon 
with  his  own  hand. 

It  was  hard  to  realize  that  this  silent  plain  had 
once  resounded  with  martial  music  and  trembled  to 
the  tramp  of  armed  men.  It  was  hard  to  people 
this  solitude  with  rushing  columns  of  cavalry,  and 
stir  its  torpid  pulses  with  the  shouts  of  victors,  the 
shrieks  of  the  wounded,  and  the  flash  of  banner  and 
steel  above  the  surging  billows  of  war.  A  desolation 
is  here  that  not  even  imagination  can  grace  with  the 
pomp  of  life  and  action. 

We  reached  Tabor  safely,  and  considerably  in 
advance  of  that  old  iron-clad  swindle  of  a  guard. 
We  never  saw  a  human  being  on  the  whole  route, 
much  less  lawless  hordfes  of  Bedouins.  Tabor  stands 
solitary  and  alone,  a  giant  sentinel  above  the  Plain 
of  Esdraelon.  It  rises  some  fourteen  hundred  feet 
above  the  surrounding  level,  a  green,  wooded  cone, 
symmetrical  and  full  of  grace — a  prominent  land- 
mark, a^d  one  that  is  exceedingly  pleasant  to  eyes 

253 


MARK    TWAIN 

surfeited  with  the  repulsive  monotony  of  desert 
Syria.  We  climbed  the  steep  path  to  its  summit, 
through  breezy  glades  of  thorn  and  oak.  The  view 
presented  from  its  highest  peak  was  almost  beautiful. 
Below,  was  the  broad,  level  plain  of  Esdraelon, 
checkered  with  fields  like  a  chess-board,  and  full  as 
smooth  and  level,  seemingly;  dotted  about  its 
borders  with  white,  compact  villages,  and  faintly 
penciled,  far  and  near,  with  the  curving  lines  of 
roads  and  trails.  When  it  is  robed  in  the  fresh 
verdure  of  spring,  it  must  form  a  charming  picture, 
even  by  itself.  Skirting  its  southern  border  rises 
"Little  Hermon,"  over  whose  summit  a  glimpse  of 
Gilboa  is  caught.  Nain,  famous  for  the  raising  of 
the  widow's  son,  and  Endor,  as  famous  for  the 
performances  of  her  witch,  are  in  view.  To  the 
eastward  lies  the  Valley  of  the  Jordan  and  beyond 
it  the  mountains  of  Gilead.  Westward  is  Mount 
Carmel.  Hermon  in  the  north — the  table-lands  of 
Bashan — Safed,  the  holy  city,  gleaming  white  upon 
a  tall  spur  of  the  mountains  of  Lebanon — a  steel-blue 
corner  of  the  Sea  of  Galilee — saddle-peaked  Hat  tin, 
traditional  "Mount  of  Beatitudes"  and  mute  witness 
of  the  last  brave  fight  of  the  Crusading  host  for  Holy 
Cross — these  fill  up  the  picture. 

To  glance  at  the  salient  features  of  this  landscape 
through  the  picturesque  framework  of  a  ragged  and 
ruined  stone  window-arch  of  the  time  of  Christ,  thus 
hiding  from  sight  all  that  is  unattractive,  is  to  secure 
to  yourself  a  pleasure  worth  climbing  the  mountain 
to  enjoy.  One  must  stand  on  his  head  to  get  the 
best  effect  in  a  fine  sunset,  and  set  a  landscape  in  a 

254 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

bold,  strong  framework  that  is  very  close  at  hand, 
to  bring  out  all  its  beauty.  One  learns  this  latter 
truth  never  more  to  forget  it,  in  that  mimic  land 
of  enchantment,  the  wonderful  garden  of  my  lord 
the  Count  Pallavicini,  near  Genoa.  You  go  wander- 
ing for  hours  among  hills  and  wooded  glens,  art- 
fully contrived  to  leave  the  impression  that  Nature 
shaped  them  and  not  man ;  following  winding  paths 
and  coming  suddenly  upon  leaping  cascades  and 
rustic  bridges;  finding  sylvan  lakes  where  you  ex- 
pected them  not;  loitering  through  battered  medie- 
val castles  in  miniature  that  seem  hoary  with  age  and 
yet  were  built  a  dozen  years  ago;  meditating  over 
ancient  crumbling  tombs,  whose  marble  columns 
were  marred  and  broken  purposely  by  the  modern 
artist  that  made  them;  stumbling  unawares  upon 
toy  palaces,  wrought  of  rare  and  costly  materials, 
and  again  upon  a  peasant's  hut,  whose  dilapidated 
furniture  would  never  suggest  that  it  was  made  so  to 
order;  sweeping  round  and  round  in  the  midst  of  a 
forest  on  an  enchanted  wooden  horse  that  is  moved 
by  some  invisible  agency;  traversing  Roman  roads 
and  passing  under  majestic  triumphal  arches;  rest- 
ing in  quaint  bowers  where  unseen  spirits  discharge 
jets  of  water  on  you  from  every  possible  direction, 
and  where  even  the  flowers  you  touch  assail  you 
with  a  shower;  boating  on  a  subterranean  lake 
among  caverns  and  arches  royally  draped  with 
clustering  stalactites,  and  passing  out  into  open  day 
upon  another  lake,  which  is  bordered  with  sloping 
banks  of  grass  and  gay  with  patrician  barges  that 
swim  at  anchor  in  the  shadow  of  a  miniature  marble 

255 


MARK    TWAIN 

temple  that  rises  out  of  the  clear  water  and  glasses 
its  white  statues,  its  rich  capitals  and  fluted  columns 
in  the  tranquil  depths.  So,  from  marvel  to  marvel 
you  have  drifted  on,  thinking  all  the  time  that  the 
one  last  seen  must  be  the  chief  est.  And,  verily, 
the  chief  est  wonder  is  reserved  until  the  last,  but 
you  do  not  see  it  until  you  step  ashore,  and  passing 
through  a  wilderness  of  rare  flowers,  collected  from 
every  corner  of  the  earth,  you  stand  at  the  door  of 
one  more  mimic  temple.  Right  in  this  place  the 
artist  taxed  his  genius  to  the  utmost,  and  fairly 
opened  the  gates  of  fairy -land.  You  look  through 
an  unpretending  pane  of  glass,  stained  yellow;  the 
first  thing  you  see  is  a  mass  of  quivering  foliage,  ten 
short  steps  before  you,  in  the  midst  of  which  is  a 
ragged  opening  like  a  gateway — a  thing  that  is 
common  enough  in  nature,  and  not  apt  to  excite 
suspicions  of  a  deep  human  design — and  above  the 
bottom  of  the  gateway,  project,  in  the  most  careless 
way,  a  few  broad  tropic  leaves  and  brilliant  flowers. 
All  of  a  sudden,  through  this  bright,  bold  gateway, 
you  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  faintest,  softest,  richest 
picture  that  ever  graced  the  dream  of  a  dying  Saint, 
since  John  saw  the  New  Jerusalem  glimmering  above 
the  clouds  of  Heaven.  A  broad  sweep  of  sea, 
flecked  with  careening  sails;  a  sharp,  jutting  cape, 
and  a  lofty  lighthouse  on  it;  a  sloping  lawn  behind 
it;  beyond,  a  portion  of  the  old  "city  of  palaces," 
with  its  parks  and  hills  and  stately  mansions ;  beyond 
these,  a  prodigious  mountain,  with  its  strong  out- 
lines sharply  cut  against  ocean  and  sky;  and,  over 
all,  vagrant  shreds  and  flakes  of  cloud,  floating  in  a 

256 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

sea  of  gold.  The  ocean  is  gold,  the  city  is  gold, 
the  meadow,  the  mountain,  the  sky — everything  is 
golden — rich,  and  mellow,  and  dreamy  as  a  vision 
of  Paradise.  No  artist  could  put  upon  canvas  its 
entrancing  beauty,  and  yet,  without  the  yellow* 
glass,  and  the  carefully  contrived  accident  of  a 
framework  that  cast  it  into  enchanted  distance  and 
shut  out  from  it  all  unattractive  features,  it  was  not 
a  picture  to  fall  into  ecstasies  over.  Such  is  life, 
and  the  trail  of  the  serpent  is  over  us  all. 

There  is  nothing  for  it  now  but  to  come  back  to 
old  Tabor,  though  the  subject  is  tiresome  enough, 
and  I  cannot  stick  to  it  for  wandering  off  to  scenes 
that  are  pleasanter  to  remember.  I  think  I  will 
skip,  anyhow.  There  is  nothing  about  Tabor  (ex- 
cept we  concede  that  it  was  the  scene  of  the  Trans- 
figuration), but  some  gray  old  ruins,  stacked  up 
there  in  all  ages  of  the  world  from  the  days  of  stout 
Gideon  and  parties  that  flourished  thirty  centuries 
ago  to  the  fresh  yesterday  of  Crusading  times.  It 
has  its  Greek  Convent,  and  the  coffee  there  is  good, 
but  never  a  splinter  of  the  true  cross  or  bone  of  a 
hallowed  saint  to  arrest  the  idle  thoughts  of  world- 
lings and  turn  them  into  graver  channels.  A  Cath- 
olic church  is  nothing  to  me  that  has  no  relics. 

The  plain  of  Esdraelon — "the  battle-field  of  the 
nations" — only  sets  one  to  dreaming  of  Joshua, 
and  Benhadad,  and  Saul,  and  Gideon;  Tamerlane, 
Tancred,  Cceur  de  Lion,  and  Saladin;  the  warrior 
Kings  of  Persia,  Egypt's  heroes,  and  Napoleon — 
for  they  all  fought  here.  If  the  magic  of  the  moon- 
light could  summon  from  the  graves  of  forgotten 

257 


MARK    TWAIN 

centuries  and  many  lands  the  countless  myriads  that 
have  battled  on  this  wide,  far-reaching  floor,  and 
array  them  in  the  thousand  strange  costumes  of  their 
hundred  nationalities,  and  send  the  vast  host  sweep- 
ing down  the  plain,  splendid  with  plumes  and  ban- 
ners and  glittering  lances,  I  could  stay  here  an  age 
to  see  the  phantom  pageant.  But  the  magic  of  the 
moonlight  is  a  vanity  and  a  fraud;  and  whoso 
putteth  his  trust  in  it  shall  suffer  sorrow  and  dis- 
appointment. 

Down  at  the  foot  of  Tabor,  and  just  at  the  edge 
of  the  storied  Plain  of  Esdraelon,  is  the  insignificant 
village  of  Deburieh,  where  Deborah,  prophetess  of 
Israel,  lived.     It  is  just  like  Magdala. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

WE  descended  from  Mount  Tabor,  crossed  a 
deep  ravine,  and  followed  a  hilly,  rocky  road 
to  Nazareth — distant  two  hours.  All  distances  in  the 
East  are  measured  by  hours,  not  miles.  A  good 
horse  will  walk  three  miles  an  hour  over  nearly  any 
kind  of  a  road;  therefore,  an  hour  here  always 
stands  for  three  miles.  This  method  of  computation 
is  bothersome  and  annoying;  and  until  one  gets 
thoroughly  accustomed  to  it,  it  carries  no  intelli- 
gence to  his  mind  until  he  has  stopped  and  trans- 
lated the  pagan  hours  into  Christian  miles,  just  as 
people  do  with  the  spoken  words  of  a  foreign  lan- 
guage they  are  acquainted  with,  but  not  familiarly 
enough  to  catch  the  meaning  in  a  moment.  Dis- 
tances traveled  by  human  feet  are  also  estimated  by 
hours  and  minutes,  though  I  do  not  know  what  the 
base  of  the  calculation  is.  In  Constantinople  you 
ask,  "How  far  is  it  to  the  Consulate?"  and  they 
answer,  "About  ten  minutes."  "How  far  is  it  to 
the  Lloyds'  Agency?"  "Quarter  of  an  hour." 
"How  far  is  it  to  the  lower  bridge?"  "Four  min- 
utes." I  cannot  be  positive  about  it,  but  I  think 
that  there,  when  a  man  orders  a  pair  of  pantaloons, 
he  says  he  wants  them  a  quarter  of  a  minute  in  the 
legs  and  nine  seconds  around  the  waist. 

259 


MARK    TWAIN 

Two  hours  from  Tabor  to  Nazareth — and  as  it  was 
an  uncommonly  narrow,  crooked  trail,  we  neces- 
sarily met  all  the  camel-trains  and  jackass-caravans 
between  Jericho  and  Jacksonville  in  that  particular 
place  and  nowhere  else.  The  donkeys  do  not  matter 
so  much,  because  they  are  so  small  that  you  can 
jump  your  horse  over  them  if  he  is  an  animal  of 
spirit,  but  a  camel  is  not  jumpable.  A  camel  is  as 
tall  as  any  ordinary  dwelling-house  in  Syria — which 
is  to  say  a  camel  is  from  one  to  two,  and  sometimes 
nearly  three  feet  taller  than  a  good-sized  man.  In 
this  part  of  the  country  his  load  is  oftenest  in  the 
shape  of  colossal  sacks — one  on  each  side.  He 
and  his  cargo  take  up  as  much  room  as  a  carriage. 
Think  of  meeting  this  style  of  obstruction  in  a 
narrow  trail.  The  camel  would  not  turn  out  for  a 
king.  He  stalks,  serenely  along,  bringing  his  cush- 
ioned stilts  forward  with  the  long,  regular  swing  of 
a  pendulum,  and  whatever  is  in  the  way  must  get 
out  of  the  way  peaceably,  or  be  wiped  out  forcibly 
by  the  bulky  sacks.  It  was  a  tiresome  ride  to  us, 
and  perfectly  exhausting  to  the  horses.  We  were 
compelled  to  jump  over  upward  of  eighteen  hundred 
donkeys,  and  only  one  person  in  the  party  was 
unseated  less  than  sixty  times  by  the  camels.  This 
seems  like  a  powerful  statement,  but  the  poet  has 
said,  " Things  are  not  what  they  seem."  I  cannot 
think  of  anything  now  more  certain  to  make  one 
shudder,  than  to  have  a  soft-footed  camel  sneak  up 
behind  him  and  touch  him  on  the  ear  with  its  cold, 
flabby  under-lip.  A  camel  did  this  for  one  of  the 
boys,  who  was  drooping  over  his  saddle  in  a  brown- 

360 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

study.  He  glanced  up  and  saw  the  majestic  appari- 
tion hovering  above  him,  and  made  frantic  efforts  to 
get  out  of  the  way,  but  the  camel  reached  out  and 
bit  him  on  the  shoulder  before  he  accomplished  it. 
This  was  the  only  pleasant  incident  of  the  journey. 

At  Nazareth  we  camped  in  an  olive  grove  near 
the  Virgin  Mary's  fountain,  and  that  wonderful 
Arab  "guard"  came  to  collect  some  bucksheesh 
for  his  "services"  in  following  us  from  Tiberias 
and  warding  off  invisible  dangers  with  the  terrors  of 
his  armament.  The  dragoman  had  paid  his  master, 
but  that  counted  as  nothing — if  you  hire  a  man  to 
sneeze  for  you  here,  and  another  man  chooses  to 
help  him,  you  have  got  to  pay  both.  They  do 
nothing  whatever  without  pay.  How  it  must  have 
surprised  these  people  to  hear  the  way  of  salvation 
offered  to  them  "without  money  and  without  price." 
If  the  manners,  the  people,  or  the  customs  of  this 
country  have  changed  since  the  Saviour's  time,  the 
figures  and  metaphors  of  the  Bible  are  not  the 
evidences  to  prove  it  by. 

We  entered  the  great  Latin  Convent  which  is 
built  over  the  traditional  dwelling-place  of  the  Holy 
Family.  We  went  down  a  flight  of  fifteen  steps 
below  the  ground-level,  and  stood  in  a  small  chapel 
tricked  out  with  tapestry  hangings,  silver  lamps,  and 
oil  -  paintings.  A  spot  marked  by  a  cross,  in  the 
marble  floor,  under  the  altar,  was  exhibited  as  the 
place  made  forever  holy  by  the  feet  of  the  Virgin 
when  she  stood  up  to  receive  the  message  of  the 
angel.  So  simple,  so  unpretending  a  locality,  to  be 
xhe  scene  of  so  mighty  an  event  I    The  very  scene 

261 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  the  Annunciation — an  event  which  has  been 
commemorated  by  splendid  shrines  and  august  tem- 
ples all  over  the  civilized  world,  and  one  which  the 
princes  of  art  have  made  it  their  loftiest  ambition 
to  picture  worthily  on  their  canvas;  a  spot  whose 
history  is  familiar  to  the  very  children  of  every 
house,  and  city,  and  obscure  hamlet  of  the  furthest 
lands  of  Christendom ;  a  spot  which  myriads  of  men 
would  toil  across  the  breadth  of  a  world  to  see, 
would  consider  it  a  priceless  privilege  to  look  upon. 
It  was  easy  to  think  these  thoughts.  But  it  was  not 
easy  to  bring  myself  up  to  the  magnitude  of  the 
situation.  I  could  sit  off  several  thousand  miles  and 
imagine  the  angel  appearing,  with  shadowy  wings 
and  lustrous  countenance,  and  note  the  glory  that 
streamed  downward  upon  the  Virgin's  head  while 
the  message  from  the  Throne  of  God  fell  upon  her 
ears — any  one  can  do  that,  beyond  the  ocean,  but 
few  can  do  it  here.  I  saw  the  little  recess  from 
which  the  angel  stepped,  but  could  not  fill  its  void. 
The  angels  that  I  know  are  creatures  of  unstable 
fancy — they  will  not  fit  in  niches  of  substantial 
stone.  Imagination  labors  best  in  distant  fields.  I 
doubt  if  any  man  can  stand  in  the  Grotto  of  the 
Annunciation  and  people  with  the  phantom  images 
of  his  mind  its  too  tangible  walls  of  stone. 

They  showed  us  a  broken  granite  pillar,  depend- 
ing from  the  roof,  which  they  said  was  hacked  in 
two  by  the  Moslem  conquerors  of  Nazareth,  in  the 
vain  hope  of  pulling  down  the  sanctuary.  But  the 
pillar  remained  miraculously  suspended  in  the  air, 
and,   unsupported  itself,   supported  then  and  still 

262 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

supports  the  roof.     By  dividing  this  statement  up 
among  eight,  it  was  found  not  difficult  to  believe  it. 
These  gifted  Latin  monks  never  do  anything  by 
halves.     If  they  were  to  show  you  the  Brazen  Ser- 
pent that  was  elevated  in  the  wilderness,  you  could 
depend  upon  it  that  they  had  on  hand  the  pole  it 
was  elevated  on  also,  and  even  the  hole  it  stood  in. 
They  have  got  the  "Grotto"  of  the  Annunciation 
here;  and  just  as  convenient  to  it  as  one's  throat  is 
to  his  mouth,  they  have  also  the  Virgin's  Kitchen, 
and  even  her  sitting-room,  where  she  and  Joseph 
watched  the  infant  Saviour  play  with  Hebrew  toys 
eighteen  hundred  years  ago.     All  under  one  roof, 
and    all    clean,    spacious,    comfortable    "grottoes." 
It  seems  curious  that  personages  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  Holy  Family  always  lived  in  grot- 
toes— in  Nazareth,  in  Bethlehem,  in  imperial  Ephe- 
sus — and  yet  nobody  else  in  their  day  and  generation 
thought  of  doing  anything  of  the  kind.     If  they 
ever  did,   their  grottoes  are  all  gone,   and  I  sup- 
pose we  ought  to  wonder  at  the  peculiar  marvel 
of  the  preservation  of  these  I  speak  of.     When  the 
Virgin  fled  from  Herod's  wrath,  she  hid  in  a  grotto 
in  Bethlehem,  and  the  same  is  there  to  this  day. 
The  slaughter  of  the  innocents  in  Bethlehem  was 
done  in  a  grotto;   the  Saviour  was  born  in  a  grotto 
— both  are  shown  to  pilgrims  yet.     It  is  exceedingly 
strange  that  these  tremendous  events  all  happened 
in    grottoes — and    exceedingly    fortunate,    likewise, 
because  the  strongest  houses  must  crumble  to  ruin 
in  time,  but  a  grotto  in  the  living  rock  will  last 
forever.     It  is  an  imposture — this  grotto  stuff — but 

263 


MARK    TWAIN 

it  is  one  that  all  men  ought  to  thank  the  Catholics 
for.  Wherever  they  ferret  out  a  lost  locality  made 
holy  by  some  Scriptural  event,  they  straightway 
build  a  massive — almost  imperishable — church  there, 
and  preserve  the  memory  of  that  locality  for  the 
gratification  of  future  generations.  If  it  had  been 
left  to  Protestants  to  do  this  most  worthy  work, 
we  would  not  even  know  where  Jerusalem  is  to-day, 
and  the  man  who  could  go  and  put  his  finger  on 
Nazareth  would  be  too  wise  for  this  world.  The 
world  owes  the  Catholics  its  good  will  even  for  the 
happy  rascality  of  hewing  out  these  bogus  grottoes 
in  the  rock;  for  it  is  infinitely  more  satisfactory  to 
look  at  a  grotto,  where  people  have  faithfully  be- 
lieved for  centuries  that  the  Virgin  once  lived,  than 
to  have  to  imagine  a  dwelling-place  for  her  some- 
where, anywhere,  nowhere,  loose  and  at  large  all 
over  this  town  of  Nazareth.  There  is  too  large  a 
scope  of  country.  The  imagination  cannot  work. 
There  is  no  one  particular  spot  to  chain  your  eye, 
rivet  your  interest,  and  make  you  think.  The  mem- 
ory of  the  Pilgrims  cannot  perish  while  Plymouth 
Rock  remains  to  us.  The  old  monks  are  wise. 
They  know  how  to  drive  a  stake  through  a  pleasant 
tradition  that  will  hold  it  to  its  place  forever. 

We  visited  the  places  where  Jesus  worked  for 
fifteen  years  as  a  carpenter,  and  where  he  attempted 
to  teach  in  the  synagogue  and  was  driven  out  by  a 
mob.  Catholic  chapels  stand  upon  these  sites  and 
protect  the  little  fragments  of  the  ancient  walls 
which  remain.  Our  pilgrims  broke  off  specimens. 
'Ye  visited,  also,  a  new  chapel,  in  the  midst  of  the 

264 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

town,  which  is  built  around  a  boulder  some  twelve 
feet  long  by  four  feet  thick;  the  priests  discovered, 
a  few  years  ago,  that  the  disciples  had  sat  upon  this 
rock  to  rest  once,  when  they  had  walked  up  from 
Capernaum.  They  hastened  to  preserve  the  relic. 
Relics  are  very  good  property.  Travelers  are  ex- 
pected to  pay  for  seeing  them,  and  they  do  it  cheer- 
fully. We  like  the  idea.  One's  conscience  can 
never  be  the  worse  for  the  knowledge  that  he  has 
paid  his  way  like  a  man.  Our  pilgrims  would  have 
liked  very  well  to  get  out  their  lampblack  and 
stencil-plates  and  paint  their  names  on  that  rock, 
together  with  the  names  of  the  villages  they  hail 
from  in  America,  but  the  priests  permit  nothing  of 
that  kind.  To  speak  the  strict  truth,  however,  our 
party  seldom  offend  in  that  way,  though  we  have 
men  in  the  ship  who  never  lose  an  opportunity  to 
do  it.  Our  pilgrims'  chief  sin  is  their  lust  for 
"specimens."  I  suppose  that  by  this  time  they 
know  the  dimensions  of  that  rock  to  an  inch,  and 
its  weight  to  a  ton;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  charge 
that  they  will  go  back  there  to-night  and  try  to 
carry  it  off. 

This  "Fountain  of  the  Virgin"  is  the  one  which 
tradition  says  Mary  used  to  get  water  from,  twenty 
times  a  day,  when  she  was  a  girl,  and  bear  it  away 
in  a  jar  upon  her  head.  The  water  streams  through 
faucets  in  the  face  of  a  wall  of  ancient  masonry 
which  stands  removed  from  the  houses  of  the  village. 
The  young  girls  of  Nazareth  still  collect  about  it  by 
the  dozen  and  keep  up  a  riotous  laughter  and  sky- 
larking.    The  Nazarene  girls  are  homely.     Some  of 

265 


MARK    TWAIN 

them  have  large,  lustrous  eyes,  but  none  of  them 
have  pretty  faces.  These  girls  wear  a  single  gar- 
ment, usually,  and  it  is  loose,  shapeless,  of  undecided 
color;  it  is  generally  out  of  repair,  too.  They 
wear,  from  crown  to  jaw,  curious  strings  of  old  coins, 
after  the  manner  of  the  belles  of  Tiberias,  and  brass 
jewelry  upon  their  wrists  and  in  their  ears.  They 
wear  no  shoes  and  stockings.  They  are  the  most 
human  girls  we  have  found  in  the  country  yet,  and 
the  best  natured.  But  there  is  no  question  that 
these  picturesque  maidens  sadly  lack  comeliness. 

A  pilgrim — the  "Enthusiast" — said:  "See  that 
tall,  graceful  girl!  look  at  the  Madonna-like  beauty 
of  her  countenance!" 

Another  pilgrim  came  along  presently  and  said: 
"Observe  that  tall,  graceful  girl;  what  queenly 
Madonna-like  gracefulness  of  beauty  is  in  her 
countenance." 

I  said:  "She  is  not  tall,  she  is  short;  she  is  not 
beautiful,  she  is  homely;  she  is  graceful  enough,  I 
grant,  but  she  is  rather  boisterous." 

The  third  and  last  pilgrim  moved  by,  before  long, 
and  he  said:  "Ah,  what  a  tall,  graceful  girl!  what 
Madonna-like  gracefulness  of  queenly  beauty!" 

The  verdicts  were  all  in.  It  was  time,  now,  to 
look  up  the  authorities  for  all  these  opinions.  I 
found  this  paragraph,  which  follows.  Written  by 
whom?    Wm.  C.  Grimes: 

After  we  were  in  the  saddle,  we  rode  down  to  the  spring 
to  have  a  last  look  at  the  women  of  Nazareth,  who  were,  as  a 
class,  much  the  prettiest  that  we  had  seen  in  the  East.  As  we 
approached  the  crowd  a  tall  girl  of  nineteen  advanced  toward 

266 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Miriam  and  offered  her  a  cup  of  water.  Her  movement  was 
graceful  and  queenly.  We  exclaimed  on  the  spot  at  the  Madon- 
na-like beauty  of  her  countenance.  Whitely  was  suddenly 
thirsty,  and  begged  for  water,  and  drank  it  slowly,  with  his 
eyes  over  the  top  of  the  cup,  fixed  on  her  large  black  eyes,  which 
gazed  on  him  quite  as  curiously  as  he  on  her.  Then  Moreright 
wanted  water.  She  gave  it  to  him  and  he  managed  to  spill  it 
so  as  to  ask  for  another  cup,  and  by  the  time  she  came  to  me 
she  saw  through  the  operation;  her  eyes  were  full  of  fun  as  she 
looked  at  me.  I  laughed  outright,  and  she  joined  me  in  as 
gay  a  shout  as  ever  country  maiden  in  old  Orange  County.  I 
wished  for  a  picture  of  her.  A  Madonna,  whose  face  was  a 
portrait  of  that  beautiful  Nazareth  girl,  would  be  a  "  thing  of 
beauty"  and  "a  joy  forever." 

That  is  the  kind  of  gruel  which  has  been  served 
out  from  Palestine  for  ages.  Commend  me  to 
Fenimore  Cooper  to  find  beauty  in  the  Indians, 
and  to  Grimes  to  find  it  in  the  Arabs.  Arab  men 
are  often  fine-looking,  but  Arab  women  are  not. 
We  can  all  believe  that  the  Virgin  Mary  was  beau- 
tiful; it  is  not  natural  to  think  otherwise;  but  does 
it  follow  that  it  is  our  duty  to  find  beauty  in  these 
present  women  of  Nazareth? 

I  love  to  quote  from  Grimes,  because  he  is  so 
dramatic.  And  because  he  is  so  romantic.  And 
because  he  seems  to  care  but  little  whether  he  tells 
the  truth  or  not,  so  he  scares  the  reader  or  excites 
his  envy  or  his  admiration. 

He  went  through  this  peaceful  land  with  one 
hand  forever  on  his  revolver,  and  the  other  on  his 
pocket-handkerchief.  Always,  when  he  was  not  on 
the  point  of  crying  over  a  holy  place,  he  was  on  the 
point  of  killing  an  Arab.  More  surprising  things 
happened  to  him  in  Palestine  than  ever  happened  to 

267 


MARK    TWAIN 

any  traveler  here  or  elsewhere  since  Munchausen 
died. 

At  Beit  Jin,  where  nobody  had  interfered  with 
him,  he  crept  out  of  his  tent  at  dead  of  night  and 
shot  at  what  he  took  to  be  an  Arab  lying  on  a 
rock,  some  distance  away,  planning  evil.  The  ball 
killed  a  wolf.  Just  before  he  fired,  he  makes  a 
dramatic  picture  of  himself — as  usual,  to  scare  the 
reader : 

Was  it  imagination,  or  did  I  see  a  moving  object  on  the 
surface  of  the  rock?  If  it  were  a  man,  why  did  he  not  now  drop 
me?  He  had  a  beautiful  shot  as  I  stood  out  in  my  black  bur- 
noose  against  the  white  tent.  I  had  the  sensation  of  an  enter- 
ing bullet  in  my  throat,  breast,  brain. 

Reckless  creature! 

Riding  toward  Gennesaret,  they  saw  two  Bedouins, 
and  "we  looked  to  our  pistols  and  loosened  them 
quietly  in  our  shawls,"  etc.     Always  cool. 

In  Samaria,  he  charged  up  a  hill,  in  the  face  of  a 
volley  of  stones;  he  fired  into  the  crowd  of  men 
who  threw  them.     He  says: 

/  never  lost  an  opportunity  of  impressing  the  Arabs  with  the 
perfection  of  American  and  English  weapons,  and  the  danger 
of  attacking  any  one  of  the  armed  Franks.  I  think  the  lesson 
of  that  ball  not  lost. 

At  Beitin  he  gave  his  whole  band  of  Arab  mule- 
teers a  piece  of  his  mind,  and  then — 

I  contented  myself  with  a  solemn  assurance  that  if  there 
occurred  another  instance  of  disobedience  to  orders,  I  would 
thrash  the  responsible  party  as  he  never  dreamed  of  being 
thrashed,  and  if  I  could  not  find  who  was  responsible,  I  would 
whip  them  all,  from  first  to  last,  whether  there  was  a  governor 
at  hand  to  do  it  or  I  had  to  do  it  myself. 

268 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Perfectly  fearless,  this  man. 

He  rode  down  the  perpendicular  path  in  the 
rocks,  from  the  Castle  of  Banias  to  the  oak  grove, 
at  a  flying  gallop,  his  horse  striding  "thirty  feet" 
at  every  bound.  I  stand  prepared  to  bring  thirty 
reliable  witnesses  to  prove  that  Putnam's  famous 
feat  at  Horseneck  was  insignificant  compared  to 
this. 

Behold  him — always  theatrical — looking  at  Jeru- 
salem— this  time,  by  an  oversight,  with  his  hand  off 
his  pistol  for  once. 

I  stood  in  the  road,  my  hand  on  my  horse's  neck,  and  with 
my  dim  eyes  sought  to  trace  the  outlines  of  the  holy  places 
which  I  had  long  before  fixed  in  my  mind,  but  the  fast-flowing 
tears  forbade  my  succeeding.  There  were  our  Mohammedan 
servants,  a  Latin  monk,  two  Armenians,  and  a  Jew  in  our 
cortege,  and  all  alike  gazed  with  overflowing  eyes. 

If  Latin  monks  and  Arabs  cried,  I  know  to  a 
moral  certainty  that  the  horses  cried  also,  and  so 
the  picture  is  complete. 

But  when  necessity  demanded  he  could  be  firm  as 
adamant.  In  the  Lebanon  Valley  an  Arab  youth — 
a  Christian ;  he  is  particular  to  explain  that  Moham- 
medans do  not  steal — robbed  him  of  a  paltry  ten 
dollars'  worth  of  powder  and  shot.  He  convicted 
him  before  a  sheik  and  looked  on  while  he  was 
punished  by  the  terrible  bastinado.     Hear  him: 

He  (Mousa)  was  on  his  back  in  a  twinkling,  howling,  shout- 
ing, screaming,  but  he  was  carried  out  to  the  piazza  before  the 
door,  where  we  could  see  the  operation,  and  laid  face  down. 
One  man  sat  on  his  back  and  one  on  his  legs,  the  latter  holding 
up  his  feet,  while  a  third  laid  on  the  bare  soles  a  rhinoceros-hide 

269 


MARK    TWAIN 

koorbash1  that  whizzed  through  the  air  at  every  stroke.  Poor 
Moreright  was  in  agony,  and  Nama  and  Nama  the  Second 
(mother  and  sister  of  Mousa)  were  on  their  faces  begging  and 
wailing,  now  embracing  my  knees  and  now  Whitely's,  while 
the  brother,  outside,  made  the  air  ring  with  cries  louder  than 
Mousa's.  Even  Yusef  came  and  asked  me  on  his  knees  to 
relent,  and  last  of  all  Betuni — the  rascal  had  lost  a  feed-bag  in 
their  house  and  had  been  loudest  in  his  denunciations  that 
morning — besought  the  Howajji  to  have  mercy  on  the  fellow. 

But  not  he!  The  punishment  was  " suspended,' ' 
at  the  fifteenth  blow,  to  hear  the  confession.  Then 
Grimes  and  his  party  rode  away,  and  left  the  entire 
Christian  family  to  be  fined  and  as  severely  punished 
as  the  Mohammedan  sheik  should  deem  proper. 

As  I  mounted,  Yusef  once  more  begged  me  to  interfere  and 
have  mercy  on  them,  but  I  looked  around  at  the  dark  faces 
of  the  crowd,  and  I  couldn't  find  one  drop  of  pity  in  my  heart 
for  them. 

He  closes  his  picture  with  a  rollicking  burst  of 
humor  which  contrasts  finely  with  the  grief  of  the 
mother  and  her  children. 

One  more  paragraph: 

Then  once  more  I  bowed  my  head.  It  is  no  shame  to  have 
wept  in  Palestine.  I  wept  when  I  saw  Jerusalem,  I  wept  when 
I  lay  in  the  starlight  at  Bethlehem,  I  wept  on  the  blessed  shores 
of  Galilee.  My  hand  was  no  less  firm  on  the  rein,  my  finger  did 
not  tremble  on  the  trigger  of  my  pistol  when  I  rode  with  it  in 
my  right  hand  along  the  shore  of  the  blue  sea  [weeping].     My 

1  "A  koorbash  is  Arabic  for  cowhide,  the  cow  being  a  rhinoceros. 
It  is  the  most  cruel  whip  known  to  fame.  Heavy  as  lead  and 
flexible  as  India-rubber,  usually  about  forty  inches  long  and  taper- 
ing gradually  from  an  inch  in  diameter  to  a  point,  it  administers  a 
blow  which  leaves  its  mark  for  time." — Scow  Life  in  Egypt,  by  the 
same  author. 

270 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

eye  was  not  dimmed  by  those  tears  nor  my  heart  in  aught  weak- 
ened. Let  him  who  would  sneer  at  my  emotion  close  this 
volume  here,  for  he  will  find  little  to  his  taste  in  my  journeyings 
through  Holy  Land. 

He  never  bored  but  he  struck  water. 

I  am  aware  that  this  is  a  pretty  voluminous  notice 
of  Mr.  Grimes's  book.  However,  it  is  proper  and 
legitimate  to  speak  of  it,  for  Nomadic  Life  in  Pales- 
tine is  a  representative  book — the  representative 
of  a  class  of  Palestine  books — and  a  criticism  upon 
it  will  serve  for  a  criticism  upon  them  all.  And 
since  I  am  treating  it  in  the  comprehensive  capacity 
of  a  representative  book,  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of 
giving  to  both  book  and  author  fictitious  names. 
Perhaps  it  is  in  better  taste,  anyhow,  to  do  this. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

NAZARETH  is  wonderfully  interesting  because 
the  town  has  an  air  about  it  of  being  precisely 
as  Jesus  left  it,  and  one  finds  himself  saying,  all  the 
time,  "The  boy  Jesus  has  stood  in  this  doorway — 
has  played  in  that  street — has  touched  these  stones 
with  his  hands — has  rambled  over  these  chalky 
hills."  Whoever  shall  write  the  Boyhood  of  Jesus 
ingeniously,  will  make  a  book  which  will  possess  a 
vivid  interest  for  young  and  old  alike.  I  judge  so 
from  the  greater  interest  we  found  in  Nazareth  than 
any  of  our  speculations  upon  Capernaum  and  the 
Sea  of  Galilee  gave  rise  to.  It  was  not  possible, 
standing  by  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  to  frame  more  than 
a  vague,  far-away  idea  of  the  majestic  Personage 
who  walked  upon  the  crested  waves  as  if  they  had 
been  solid  earth,  and  who  touched  the  dead  and  they 
rose  up  and  spoke.  I  read  among  my  notes,  now, 
with  a  new  interest,  some  sentences  from  an  edi- 
tion of  162 1  of  the  Apocryphal  New  Testament. 
[Extract.] 

Christ,  kissed  by  a  bride  made  dumb  by  sorcerers,  cures 
her.  A  leprous  girl  cured  by  the  water  in  which  the  infant 
Christ  was  washed,  and  becomes  the  servant  of  Joseph  and  Mary. 
The  leprous  son  of  a  Prince  cured  in  like  manner. 

A  young  man  who  had  been  bewitched  and  turned  into  a 

272 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

mule,  miraculously  cured  by  the  infant  Saviour  being  put  on 
his  back,  and  is  married  to  the  girl  who  had  been  cured  of 
leprosy.     Whereupon  the  bystanders  praise  God. 

Chapter  16.  Christ  miraculously  widens  or  contracts  gates, 
milk  pails,  seives,  or  boxes  not  properly  made  by  Joseph,  he 
not  being  skilful  at  his  carpenter's  trade.  The  King  of  Jeru- 
salem gives  Joseph  an  order  for  a  throne.  Joseph  works  on  it 
for  two  years  and  makes  it  two  spans  too  short.  The  King 
being  angry  with  him,  Jesus  comforts  him — commands  him 
to  pull  one  side  of  the  throne  while  he  pulls  the  other,  and 
brings  it  to  its  proper  dimensions. 

Chapter  19.  Jesus,  charged  with  throwing  a  boy  from  the 
roof  of  a  house,  miraculously  causes  the  dead  boy  to  speak  and 
acquit  him;  fetches  water  for  his  mother,  breaks  the  pitcher  and 
miraculously  gathers  the  water  in  his  mantle  and  brings  it  home. 

Sent  to  a  schoolmaster,  refuses  to  tell  his  letters,  and  the 
schoolmaster  going  to  whip  him,  his  hand  withers. 

Further  on  in  this  quaint  volume  of  rejected  gos- 
pels is  an  epistle  of  St.  Clement  to  the  Corinthians, 
which  was  used  in  the  churches  and  considered 
genuine  fourteen  or  fifteen  hundred  years  ago.  In 
it  this  account  of  the  fabled  phoenix  occurs: 

1.  Let  us  consider  that  wonderful  type  of  the  resurrection, 
which  is  seen  in  the  Eastern  countries,  that  is  to  say,  in  Arabia. 

2.  There  is  a  certain  bird  called  a  phcenix.  Of  this  there 
is  never  but  one  at  a  time,  and  that  lives  five  hundred  years. 
And  when  the  time  of  its  dissolution  draws  near,  that  it  must 
die,  it  makes  itself  a  nest  of  frankincense,  and  myrrh,  and  other 
spices,  into  which,  when  its  time  is  fulfilled,  it  enters  and  dies. 

3.  But  its  flesh,  putrefying,  breeds  a  certain  worm,  which 
being  nourished  by  the  juice  of  the  dead  bird,  brings  forth 
feathers;  and  when  it  is  grown  to  a  perfect  state,  it  takes  up 
the  nest  in  which  the  bones  of  its  parent  lie,  and  carries  it 
from  Arabia  into  Egypt,  to  a  city  called  Heliopolis: 

4.  And  flying  in  open  day  in  the  sight  of  all  men,  lays  it  upon 
the  altar  of  the  sun,  and  so  returns  from  whence  it  came. 

5.  The  priests  then  search  into  the  records  of  the  time,  and 
find  that  it.  returned  precisely  at  the  end  of  five  hundred  years. 

273 


MARK    TWAIN 

Business  is  business,  and  there  is  nothing  like 
punctuality,  especially  in  a  phoenix. 

The  few  chapters  relating  to  the  infancy  of  the 
Saviour  contain  many  things  which  seem  frivolous 
and  not  worth  preserving.  A  large  part  of  the 
remaining  portions  of  the  book  read  like  good  Scrip- 
ture, however.  There  is  one  verse  that  ought  not 
to  have  been  rejected,  because  it  so  evidently  pro- 
phetically refers  to  the  general  run  of  Congresses  of 
the  United  States : 

199.  They  carry  themselves  high,  and  as  prudent  men;  and 
though  they  are  fools,  yet  would  seem  to  be  teachers. 

I  have  set  these  extracts  down,  as  I  found  them. 
Everywhere,  among  the  cathedrals  of  France  and 
Italy,  one  finds  traditions  of  personages  that  do  not 
figure  in  the  Bible,  and  of  miracles  that  are  not 
mentioned  in  its  pages.  But  they  are  all  in  this 
Apocryphal  New  Testament,  and  though  they  have 
been  ruled  out  of  our  modern  Bible,  it  is  claimed 
that  they  were  accepted  gospel  twelve  or  fifteen 
centuries  ago,  and  ranked  as  high  in  credit  as  any. 
One  needs  to  read  this  book  before  he  visits  those 
venerable  cathedrals,  with  their  treasures  of  tabooed 
and  forgotten  tradition. 

They  imposed  another  pirate  upon  us  at  Nazareth 
— another  invincible  Arab  guard.  We  took  our 
last  look  at  the  city,  clinging  like  a  whitewashed 
wasp's  nest  to  the  hillside,  and  at  eight  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  departed.  We  dismounted  and  drove 
the  horses  down  a  bridle-path  which  I  think  was 
fully  as  crooked  as  a  corkscrew;   which  I  know  to 

274 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

be  as  steep  as  the  downward  sweep  of  a  rainbow, 
and  which  I  believe  to  be  the  worst  piece  of  road  in 
the  geography,  except  one  in  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
which  I  remember  painfully,  and  possibly  one  or 
two  mountain- trails  in  the  Sierra  Nevadas.  Often, 
in  this  narrow  path,  the  horse  had  to  poise  himself 
nicely  on  a  rude  stone  step  and  then  drop  his  fore- 
feet over  the  edge  and  down  something  more  than 
half  his  own  height.  This  brought  his  nose  near 
the  ground,  while  his  tail  pointed  up  toward  the  sky 
somewhere,  and  gave  him  the  appearance  of  pre- 
paring to  stand  on  his  head.  A  horse  cannot  look 
dignified  in  this  position.  We  accomplished  the 
long  descent  at  last,  and  trotted  across  the  great 
Plain  of  Esdraelon. 

Some  of  us  will  be  shot  before  we  finish  this 
pilgrimage.  The  pilgrims  read  Nomadic  Life  and 
keep  themselves  in  a  constant  state  of  Quixotic 
heroism.  They  have  their  hands  on  their  pistols  all 
the  time,  and  every  now  and  then,  when  you  least 
expect  it,  they  snatch  them  out  and  take  aim  at 
Bedouins  who  are  not  visible,  and  draw  their  knives 
and  make  savage  passes  at  other  Bedouins  who  do 
not  exist.  I  am  in  deadly  peril  always,  for  these 
spasms  are  sudden  and  irregular,  and,  of  course,  I 
cannot  tell  when  to  be  getting  out  of  the  way.  If  I 
am  accidentally  murdered,  some  time,  during  one  of 
these  romantic  frenzies  of  the  pilgrims,  Mr.  Grimes 
must  be  rigidly  held  to  answer  as  an  accessory  before 
the  fact.  If  the  pilgrims  would  take  deliberate  aim 
and  shoot  at  a  man,  it  would  be  all  right  and  proper 
— because  that  man  would  not  be  in  any  danger; 

275 


MARK    TWAIN 

but  these  random  assaults  are  what  I  object  to. 
I  do  not  wish  to  see  any  more  places  like  Esdraelon, 
where  the  ground  is  level  and  people  can  gallop. 
It  puts  melodramatic  nonsense  into  the  pilgrims' 
heads.  All  at  once,  when  one  is  jogging  along 
stupidly  in  the  sun,  and  thiniang  about  something 
ever  so  far  away,  here  they  come,  at  a  stormy  gal- 
lop, spurring  and  whooping  at  those  ridgy  old  sore- 
backed  plugs  till  their  heels  fly  higher  than  their 
heads,  and,  as  they  whiz  by,  out  comes  a  little  potato- 
gun  of  a  revolver,  there  is  a  startling  little  pop,  and 
a  small  pellet  goes  singing  through  the  air.  Now 
that  I  have  begun  this  pilgrimage,  I  intend  to  go 
through  with  it,  though,  sooth  to  say,  nothing  but 
the  most  desperate  valor  has  kept  me  to  my  purpose 
up  to  the  present  time.  I  do  not  mind  Bedouins, — 
I  am  not  afraid  of  them;  because  neither  Bedouins 
nor  ordinary  Arabs  have  shown  any  disposition  to 
harm  us,  but  I  do  feel  afraid  of  my  own  comrades. 
Arriving  at  the  furthest  verge  of  the  Plain,  we 
rode  a  little  way  up  a  hill  and  found  ourselves  at 
Endor,  famous  for  its  witch.  Her  descendants  are 
there  yet.  They  were  the  wildest  horde  of  half- 
naked  savages  we  have  found  thus  far.  They 
swarmed  out  of  mud  bee-hives;  out  of  hovels  of 
the  dry-goods-box  pattern;  out  of  gaping  caves 
under  shelving  rocks;  out  of  crevices  in  the  earth. 
In  five  minutes  the  dead  solitude  and  silence  of  the 
place  were  no  more,  and  a  begging,  screeching, 
shouting  mob  were  struggling  about  the  horses'  feet 
and  blocking  the  way.  ' '  Bucksheesh !  buchsheesh! 
bucksheesh!  howajji,  bucksheesh!"     It  was  Magdala 

276 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

over  again,  only  here  the  glare  from  the  infidel  eyes 
was  tierce  and  full  of  hate.  The  population  numbers 
two  hundred  and  fifty,  and  more  than  half  the 
citizens  live  in  caves  in  the  rock.  Dirt,  degradation, 
and  savagery  are  Endor's  specialty.  We  say  no 
more  about  Magdala  and  Deburieh  now.  Endor 
heads  the  list.  It  is  worse  than  an  Indian  cam- 
poodle.  The  hill  is  barren,  rocky,  and  forbidding. 
No  sprig  of  grass  is  visible,  and  only  one  tree. 
This  is  a  fig  tree,  which  maintains  a  precarious  foot- 
ing among  the  rocks  at  the  mouth  of  the  dismal 
cavern  once  occupied  by  the  veritable  Witch  of 
Endor.  In  this  cavern,  tradition  says,  Saul,  the 
King,  sat  at  midnight,  and  stared  and  trembled, 
while  the  earth  shook,  the  thunders  crashed  among 
the  hills,  and  out  of  the  midst  of  fire  and  smoke  the 
spirit  of  the  dead  prophet  rose  up  and  confronted 
him.  Saul  had  crept  to  this  place  in  the  darkness, 
while  his  army  slept,  to  learn  what  fate  awaited  him 
in  the  morrow's  battle.  He  went  away  a  sad  man, 
to  meet  disgrace  and  death. 

A  spring  trickles  out  of  the  rock  in  the  gloomy 
recesses  of  the  cavern,  and  we  were  thirsty.  The 
citizens  of  Endor  objected  to  our  going  in  there. 
They  do  not  mind  dirt;  they  do  not  mind  rags; 
they  do  not  mind  vermin;  they  do  not  mind  bar- 
barous ignorance  and  savagery;  they  do  not  mind  a 
reasonable  degree  of  starvation,  but  they  do  like  to 
be  pure  and  holy  before  their  god,  whoever  he  may 
be,  and  therefore  they  shudder  and  grow  almost 
pale  at  the  idea  of  Christian  lips  polluting  a  spring 
whose  waters  must   descend  into  their  sanctified 

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MARK    TWAIN 

gullets.  We  had  no  wanton  desire  to  wound  even 
their  feelings  or  trample  upon  their  prejudices,  but 
we  were  out  of  water,  thus  early  in  the  day,  and 
were  burning  up  with  thirst.  It  was  at  this  time 
and  under  these  circumstances  that  I  framed  an 
aphorism  which  has  already  become  celebrated.  I 
said:  " Necessity  knows  no  law."  We  went  in  and 
drank. 

We  got  away  from  the  noisy  wretches,  finally, 
dropping  them  in  squads  and  couples  as  we  filed 
over  the  hills — the  aged  first,  the  infants  next,  the 
young  girls  further  on;  the  strong  men  ran  beside 
us  a  mile,  and  only  left  when  they  had  secured  the 
last  possible  piaster  in  the  way  of  bucksheesh. 

In  an  hour  we  reached  Nain,  where  Christ  raised 
the  widow's  son  to  life.  Nain  is  Magdala  on  a 
small  scale.  It  has  no  population  of  any  conse- 
quence. Within  a  hundred  yards  of  it  is  the  original 
graveyard,  for  aught  I  know;  the  tombstones  lie 
flat  on  the  ground,  which  is  Jewish  fashion  in  Syria. 
I  believe  the  Moslems  do  not  allow  them  to  have 
upright  tombstones.  A  Moslem  grave  is  usually 
roughly  plastered  over  and  whitewashed,  and  has 
at  one  end  an  upright  projection  which  is  shaped 
into  exceedingly  rude  attempts  at  ornamentation. 
In  the  cities,  there  is  often  no  appearance  of  a  grave 
at  all;  a  tall,  slender  marble  tombstone,  elaborately 
lettered,  gilded  and  painted,  marks  the  burial-place, 
and  this  is  surmounted  by  a  turban,  so  carved  and 
shaped  as  to  signify  the  dead  man's  rank  in  life. 

They  showed  a  fragment  of  ancient  wall  which 
they  said  was  one  side  of  the  gate  out  of  which  the 

278 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

widow's  dead  son  was  being  brought  so  many  cen- 
turies ago  when  Jesus  met  the  procession: 

Now  when  he  came  nigh  to  the  gate  of  the  city,  behold  there 
was  a  dead  man  carried  out,  the  only  son  of  his  mother,  and  she 
was  a  widow;  and  much  people  of  the  city  was  with  her. 

And  when  the  Lord  saw  her,  he  had  compassion  on  her,  and 
said,  Weep  not. 

And  he  came  and  touched  the  bier:  and  they  that  bare  him 
stood  still.     And  he  said,  Young  man,  I  say  unto  thee,  arise. 

And  he  that  was  dead  sat  up,  and  began  to  speak.  And  he 
delivered  him  to  his  mother. 

And  there  came  a  fear  on  all.  And  they  glorified  God,  say- 
ing, That  a  great  prophet  is  risen  up  among  us;  and  That  God 
hath  visited  his  people. 

A  little  mosque  stands  upon  the  spot  which  tradi- 
tion says  was  occupied  by  the  widow's  dwelling. 
Two  or  three  aged  Arabs  sat  about  its  door.  We 
entered,  and  the  pilgrims  broke  specimens  from  the 
foundation  walls,  though  they  had  to  touch,  and 
even  step,  upon  the  "praying-carpets"  to  do  it. 
It  was  almost  the  same  as  breaking  pieces  from  the 
hearts  of  those  old  Arabs.  To  step  rudely  upon 
the  sacred  praying-mats,  with  booted  feet — a  thing 
not  done  by  any  Arab — was  to  inflict  pain  upon 
men  who  had  not  offended  us  in  any  way.  Suppose 
a  party  of  armed  foreigners  were  to  enter  a  village 
church  in  America  and  break  ornaments  from  the 
altar  railings  for  curiosities,  and  climb  up  and  walk 
upon  the  Bible  and  the  pulpit  cushions?  However, 
the  cases  are  different.  One  is  the  profanation  of  a 
temple  of  our  faith — the  other  only  the  profanation 
of  a  pagan  one. 

We  descended  to  the  Plain  again,  and  halted  a 
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MARK    TWAIN 

moment  at  a  well — of  Abraham's  time,  no  doubt, 
It  was  in  a  desert  place.  It  was  walled  three  feet 
above  ground  with  squared  and  heavy  blocks  of 
stone,  after  the  manner  of  Bible  pictures.  Around 
it  some  camels  stood,  and  others  knelt.  There  was  a 
group  of  sober  little  donkeys  with  naked,  dusky 
children  clambering  about  them,  or  sitting  astride 
their  rumps,  or  pulling  their  tails.  Tawny,  black- 
eyed,  barefooted  maids,  arrayed  in  rags  and  adorned 
with  brazen  armlets  and  pinchbeck  earrings,  were 
poising  water  jars  upon  their  heads,  or  drawing  water 
from  the  well.  A  flock  of  sheep  stood  by,  waiting 
for  the  shepherds  to  fill  the  hollowed  stones  with 
water,  so  that  they  might  drink — stones  which,  like 
those  that  walled  the  well,  were  worn  smooth  and 
deeply  creased  by  the  chafing  chins  of  a  hundred 
generations  of  thirsty  animals.  Picturesque  Arabs 
sat  upon  the  ground,  in  groups,  and  solemnly 
smoked  their  long-stemmed  chibouks.  Other  Arabs 
were  filling  black  hogskins  with  water — skins  which, 
well  filled,  and  distended  with  water  till  the  short 
legs  projected  painfully  out  of  the  proper  line,  looked 
like  the  corpses  of  hogs  bloated  by  drowning.  Here 
was  a  grand  Oriental  picture  which  I  had  worshiped 
a  thousand  times  in  soft,  rich  steel  engravings! 
But  in  the  engraving  there  was  no  desolation;  no 
dirt;  no  rags;  no  fleas;  no  ugly  features;  no  sore 
eyes;  no  feasting  flies;  no  besotted  ignorance  in 
the  countenances;  no  raw  places  on  the  donkeys' 
backs ;  no  disagreeable  jabbering  in  unknown  tongues ; 
no  stench  of  camels;  no  suggestion  that  a  couple 
of  tons  of  powder  placed  under  the  party  and  touched 

280 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

off  would  heighten  the  effect  and  give  to  the  scene  a 
genuine  interest  and  a  charm  which  it  would  alwayu 
be  pleasant  to  recall,  even  though  a  man  lived  a 
thousand  years. 

Oriental  scenes  look  best  in  steel  engravings.  I 
cannot  be  imposed  upon  any  more  by  that  picture 
of  the  Queen  of  Sheba  visiting  Solomon.  I  shall 
say  to  myself,  You  look  fine,  madam,  but  your  feet 
are  not  clean,  and  you  smell  like  a  camel. 

Presently,  a  wild  Arab  in  charge  of  a  camel-train 
recognized  an  old  friend  in  Ferguson,  and  they  ran 
and  fell  upon  each  other's  necks  and  kissed  each 
other's  grimy,  bearded  faces  upon  both  cheeks.  It 
explained  instantly  a  something  which  had  always 
seemed  to  me  only  a  far-fetched  Oriental  figure  of 
speech.  I  refer  to  the  circumstance  of  Christ's 
rebuking  a  Pharisee,  or  some  such  character,  and 
reminding  him  that  from  him  he  had  received  no 
"kiss  of  welcome."  It  did  not  seem  reasonable  to 
me  that  men  should  kiss  each  other,  but  I  am  aware, 
now,  that  they  did.  There  was  reason  in  it,  too. 
The  custom  was  natural  and  proper;  because  people 
must  kiss,  and  a  man  would  not  be  likely  to  kiss  one 
of  the  women  of  this  country  of  his  own  free  will 
and  accord.  One  must  travel,  to  learn.  Every  day, 
now,  old  Scriptural  phrases  that  never  possessed  any 
significance  for  me  before  take  to  themselves  a 
meaning. 

We  journeyed  around  the  base  of  the  mountain — 
"Little  Hermon," — past  the  old  Crusaders'  castle 
of  El  Fuleh,  and  arrived  at  Shunem.  This  was 
another  Magdala,   to  a  fraction,  frescoes  and  all. 

281 


MARK    TWAIN 

Here,  tradition  says,  the  prophet  Samuel  was  born, 
and  here  the  Shunamite  woman  built  a  little  house 
upon  the  city  wall  for  the  accommodation  of  the 
prophet  Elisha.  Elisha  asked  her  what  she  expected 
in  return.  It  was  a  perfectly  natural  question,  for 
these  people  are  and  were  in  the  habit  of  proffering 
favors  and  services  and  then  expecting  and  begging 
for  pay.  Elisha  knew  them  well.  He  could  not 
comprehend  that  anybody  should  build  for  him  that 
humble  little  chamber  for  the  mere  sake  of  old 
friendship,  and  with  no  selfish  motive  whatever.  It 
used  to  seem  a  very  impolite,  not  to  say  a  rude 
question,  for  Elisha  to  ask  the  woman,  but  it  does 
not  seem  so  to  me  now.  The  woman  said  she  ex- 
pected nothing.  Then,  for  her  goodness  and  her 
unselfishness,  he  rejoiced  her  heart  with  the  news 
that  she  should  bear  a  son.  It  was  a  high  reward — 
but  she  would  not  have  thanked  him  for  a  daughter — 
daughters  have  always  been  unpopular  here.  The 
son  was  born,  grew,  waxed  strong,  died.  Elisha 
restored  him  to  life  in  Shunem. 

We  found  here  a  grove  of  lemon  trees — cool, 
shady,  hung  with  fruit.  One  is  apt  to  overestimate 
beauty  when  it  is  rare,  but  to  me  this  grove  seemed 
very  beautiful.  It  was  beautiful.  I  do  not  over- 
estimate it.  I  must  always  remember  Shunem  grate- 
fully, as  a  place  which  gave  to  us  this  leafy  shelter 
after  our  long,  hot  ride.  We  lunched,  rested, 
chatted,  smoked  our  pipes  an  hour,  and  then  mounted 
and  moved  on. 

As  we  trotted  across  the  Plain  of  Jezreel,  we  met 
half  a  dozen  Digger  Indians  (Bedouins)  with  very 

282 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

long  spears  in  their  hands,  cavorting  around  on  old 
crow-bait  horses,  and  spearing  imaginary  enemies; 
whooping,  and  fluttering  their  rags  in  the  wind,  and 
carrying  on  in  every  respect  like  a  pack  of  hopeless 
lunatics.  At  last,  here  were  the  "wild,  free  sons 
of  the  desert,  speeding  over  the  plain  like  the  wind, 
on  their  beautiful  Arabian  mares"  we  had  read  so 
much  about  and  longed  so  much  to  see !  Here  were 
the  "picturesque  costumes"!  This  was  the  "gal- 
lant spectacle"!  Tatterdemalion  vagrants — cheap 
braggadocio — "Arabian  mares"  spined  and  necked 
like  the  ichthyosaurus  in  the  museum,  and  humped 
and  cornered  like  a  dromedary!  To  glance  at  the 
genuine  son  of  the  desert  is  to  take  the  romance  out 
of  him  forever — to  behold  his  steed  is  to  long  in 
charity  to  strip  his  harness  off  and  let  him  fall  to 
pieces. 

Presently  we  came  to  a  ruinous  old  town  on  a  hill, 
the  same  being  the  ancient  Jezreel. 

Ahab,  King  of  Samaria  (this  was  a  very  vast  king- 
dom, for  those  days,  and  was  very  nearly  half  as 
large  as  Rhode  Island)  dwelt  in  the  city  of  Jezreel, 
which  was  his  capital.  Near  him  lived  a  man  by  the 
name  of  Naboth,  who  had  a  vineyard.  The  King 
asked  him  for  it,  and  when  he  would  not  give  it, 
offered  to  buy  it.  But  Naboth  refused  to  sell  it. 
In  those  days  it  was  considered  a  sort  of  crime 
to  part  with  one's  inheritance  at  any  price — and 
even  \f.  a  man  did  part  with  it,  it  reverted  to  himself 
or  his  heirs  again  at  the  next  jubilee  year.  So  this 
spoiled  child  of  a  King  went  and  lay  down  on  the 
bed  with  his  face  to  the  wall,  and  grieved  sorely. 

283 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  Queen,  a  notorious  character  in  those  days,  and 
whose  name  is  a  byword  and  a  reproach  even  in 
these,  came  in  and  asked  him  wherefore  he  sorrowed, 
and  he  told  her.  Jezebel  said  she  could  secure  the 
vineyard;  and  she  went  forth  and  forged  letters  to 
the  nobles  and  wise  men,  in  the  King's  name,  and 
ordered  them  to  proclaim  a  fast  and  set  Naboth  on 
high  before  the  people,  and  suborn  two  witnesses  to 
swear  that  he  had  blasphemed.  They  did  it,  and  the 
people  stoned  the  accused  by  the  city  wall,  and  he 
died.  Then  Jezebel  came  and  told  the  King,  and 
said,  Behold,  Naboth  is  no  more — rise  up  and  seize 
the  vineyard.  So  Ahab  seized  the  vineyard,  and 
went  into  it  to  possess  it.  But  the  Prophet  Elijah 
came  to  him  there  and  read  his  fate  to  him,  and  the 
fate  of  Jezebel;  and  said  that  in  the  place  where 
dogs  licked  the  blood  of  Naboth,  dogs  should  also 
lick  his  blood — and  he  said,  likewise,  the  dogs 
should  eat  Jezebel  by  the  wall  of  Jezreel.  In  the 
course  of  time,  the  King  was  killed  in  battle,  and 
when  his  chariot  wheels  were  washed  in  the  pool  of 
Samaria,  the  dogs  licked  the  blood.  In  after  years, 
Jehu,  who  was  King  of  Israel,  marched  down  against 
Jezreel,  by  order  of  one  of  the  Prophets,  and  admin- 
istered one  of  those  convincing  rebukes  so  common 
among  the  people  of  those  days:  he  killed  many 
kings  and  their  subjects,  and  as  he  came  along  he 
saw  Jezebel,  painted  and  finely  dressed,  looking  out 
of  a  window,  and  ordered  that  she  be  thrown  down 
to  him.  A  servant  did  it,  and  Jehu's  horse  trampled 
her  underfoot.  Then  Jehu  went  in  and  sat  down 
to  dinner;   and  presently  he  said,  Go  and  bury  this 

284 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

cursed  woman,  for  she  is  a  King's  daughter.  The 
spirit  of  charity  came  upon  him  too  late,  however, 
for  the  prophecy  had  already  been  fulfilled — the 
dogs  had  eaten  her,  and  they  "found  no  more  of  her 
than  the  skull  and  the  feet,  and  the  palms  of  her 
hands." 

Ahab,  the  late  King,  had  left  a  helpless  family  be- 
hind him,  and  Jehu  killed  seventy  of  the  orphan  sons. 
Then  he  killed  all  the  relatives,  and  teachers,  and 
servants  and  friends  of  the  family,  and  rested  from 
his  labors,  until  he  was  come  near  to  Samaria,  where 
he  met  forty-two  persons  and  asked  them  who  they 
were;  they  said  they  were  brothers  of  the  King  of 
Judah.  He  killed  them.  When  he  got  to  Samaria, 
he  said  he  would  show  his  zeal  for  the  Lord;  so  he 
gathered  all  the  priests  and  people  together  that 
worshiped  Baal,  pretending  that  he  was  going  to 
adopt  that  worship  and  offer  up  a  great  sacrifice; 
and  when  they  were  all  shut  up  where  they  could 
not  defend  themselves,  he  caused  every  person  of 
them  to  be  killed.  Then  Jehu,  the  good  missionary, 
rested  from  his  labors  once  more. 

We  went  back  to  the  valley,  and  rode  to  the  Foun, 
tain  of  Ain  Jelud.  They  call  it  the  Fountain  of 
Jezreel,  usually.  It  is  a  pond  about  one  hundred 
feet  square  and  four  feet  deep,  with  a  stream  of 
water  trickling  into  it  from  under  an  overhanging 
ledge  of  rocks.  It  is  in  the  midst  of  a  great  solitude. 
Here  Gideon  pitched  his  camp  in  the  old  times; 
behind  Shunem  lay  the  ' '  Midianites,  the  Amalekites, 
and  the  Children  of  the  East,"  who  were  "as  grass- 
hoppers for  multitude;   both  they  and  their  camels 

285 


MARK    TWAIN 

were  without  number,  as  the  sand  by  the  seaside  for 
multitude."  Which  means  that  there  were  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-five  thousand  men,  and  that  they 
had  transportation  service  accordingly. 

Gideon,  with  only  three  hundred  men,  surprised 
them  in  the  night,  and  stood  by  and  looked  on  while 
they  butchered  each  other  until  a  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  lay  dead  on  the  field. 

We  camped  at  Jenin  before  night,  and  got  up  and 
started  again  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Some- 
where toward  daylight  we  passed  the  locality  where 
the  best  authenticated  tradition  locates  the  pit  into 
which  Joseph's  brethren  threw  him,  and  about  noon, 
after  passing  over  a  succession  of  mountain -tops, 
clad  with  groves  of  fig  and  olive  trees,  with  the 
Mediterranean  in  sight  some  forty  miles  away,  and 
going  by  many  ancient  Biblical  cities  whose  inhab- 
itants glowered  savagely  upon  our  Christian  proces- 
sion, and  were  seemingly  inclined  to  practise  on  it 
with  stones,  we  came  to  the  singularly  terraced  and 
unlovely  hills  that  betrayed  that  we  were  out  of 
Galilee  and  into  Samaria  at  last. 

We  climbed  a  high  hill  to  visit  the  city  of  Samaria, 
where  the  woman  may  have  hailed  from  who  con- 
versed with  Christ  at  Jacob's  Well,  and  from  whence, 
no  doubt,  came  also  the  celebrated  Good  Samaritan. 
Herod  the  Great  is  said  to  have  made  a  magnificent 
city  of  this  place,  and  a  great  number  of  coarse  lime- 
stone columns,  twenty  feet  high  and  two  feet 
through,  that  are  almost  guiltless  of  architectural 
grace  of  shape  and  ornament,  are  pointed  out  by 
many  authors  as  evidence  of  the  fact.     They  would 

2S6 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

not  have  been  considered  handsome  in  ancient 
Greece,  however. 

The  inhabitants  of  this  camp  are  particularly 
vicious,  and  stoned  two  parties  of  our  pilgrims  a 
day  or  two  ago  who  brought  about  the  difficulty  by 
showing  their  revolvers  when  they  did  not  intend  to 
use  them — a  thing  which  is  deemed  bad  judgment 
in  the  Far  West,  and  ought  certainly  to  be  so  con- 
sidered anywhere.  In  the  new  Territories,  when  a 
man  puts  his  hand  on  a  weapon,  he  knows  that  he 
must  use  it ;  he  must  use  it  instantly  or  expect  to  be 
shot  down  where  he  stands.  Those  pilgrims  had 
been  reading  Grimes. 

There  was  nothing  for  us  to  do  in  Samaria  but  buy 
handfuls  of  old  Roman  coins  at  a  franc  a  dozen,  and 
look  at  a  dilapidated  church  of  the  Crusaders  and  a 
vault  in  it  which  once  contained  the  body  of  John 
the  Baptist.  The  relic  was  long  ago  carried  away 
to  Genoa. 

Samaria  stood  a  disastrous  siege,  once,  in  the 
days  of  Elisha,  at  the  hands  of  the  King  of  Syria. 
Provisions  reached  such  a  figure  that  "an  ass's  head 
was  sold  for  eighty  pieces  of  silver  and  the  fourth 
part  of  a  cab  of  dove's  dung  for  five  pieces  of  silver." 

An  incident  recorded  of  that  heavy  time  will  give 
one  a  very  good  idea  of  the  distress  that  prevailed 
within  these  crumbling  walls.  As  the  King  was 
walking  upon  the  battlements  one  day,  "a  woman 
cried  out,  saying,  Help,  my  lord,  O  King!  And  the 
King  said,  What  aileth  thee?  and  she  answered,  This 
woman  said  unto  me,  Give  thy  son,  that  we  may  eat 
him  to-day,  and  we  will  eat  my  son  to-morrow.     So 

287 


MARK    TWAIN 

we  boiled  my  son,  and  did  eat  him;  and  I  said  unto 
her  on  the  next  day,  Give  thy  son  that  we  may  eat 
him;  and  she  hath  hid  her  son." 

The  prophet  Elisha  declared  that  within  four-and- 
twenty  hours  the  prices  of  food  should  go  down  to 
nothing,  almost,  and  it  was  so.  The  Syrian  army 
broke  camp  and  fled,  for  some  cause  or  other,  the 
famine  was  relieved  from  without,  and  many  a 
shoddy  speculator  in  dove's  dung  and  ass's  meat  was 
ruined. 

We  were  glad  to  leave  this  hot  and  dusty  old 
village  and  hurry  on.  At  two  o'clock  we  stopped 
to  lunch  and  rest  at  ancient  Shechem,  between  the 
historic  Mounts  of  Gerizim  and  Ebal  where  in  the 
old  times  the  books  of  the  law,  the  curses  and  the 
blessings,  were  read  from  the  heights  to  the  Jewish 
multitudes  below. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  narrow  canon  in  which  Nablous,  or  Shechem, 
is  situated,  is  under  high  cultivation,  and  the 
soil  is  exceedingly  black  and  fertile.  It  is  well 
watered,  and  its  affluent  vegetation  gains  effect  by- 
contrast  with  the  barren  hills  that  tower  on  either 
side.  One  of  these  hills  is  the  ancient  Mount  of 
Blessings  and  the  other  the  Mount  of  Curses;  and 
wise  men  who  seek  for  fulfilment  of  prophecy  think 
they  find  here  a  wonder  of  this  kind — to  wit,  that 
the  Mount  of  Blessings  is  strangely  fertile  and  its 
mate  as  strangely  unproductive.  We  could  not  see 
that  there  was  really  much  difference  between  them 
in  this  respect,  however. 

Shechem  is  distinguished  as  one  of  the  residences 
of  the  patriarch  Jacob,  and  as  the  seat  of  those  tribes 
that  cut  themselves  loose  from  their  brethren  of 
Israel  and  propagated  doctrines  not  in  conformity 
with  those  of  the  original  Jewish  creed.  For  thou- 
sands of  years  this  clan  have  dwelt  in  Shechem  under 
strict  tabu,  and  having  little  commerce  or  fellowship 
with  their  fellow-men  of  any  religion  or  nationality. 
For  generations  they  have  not  numbered  more  than 
one  or  two  hundred,  but  they  still  adhere  to  their 
ancient  faith  and  maintain  their  ancient  rites  and 
ceremonies.    Talk  of  family  and  old  descent !  Princes 

280 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  nobles  pride  themselves  upon  lineages  they  can 
trace  back  some  hundreds  of  years.  What  is  this 
trifle  to  this  handful  of  old  first  families  of  Shechem, 
who  can  name  their  fathers  straight  back  without  a 
flaw  for  thousands — straight  back  to  a  period  so 
remote  that  men  reared  in  a  country  where  the  days 
of  two  hundred  years  ago  are  called  "ancient "  times 
grow  dazed  and  bewildered  when  they  try  to  com- 
prehend it!  Here  is  respectability  for  you — here  is 
"family" — here  is  high  descent  worth  talking  about. 
This  sad,  proud  remnant  of  a  once  mighty  com- 
munity still  hold  themselves  aloof  from  all  the 
world;  they  still  live  as  their  fathers  lived,  labor  as 
their  fathers  labored,  think  as  they  did,  feel  as  they 
did,  worship  in  the  same  place,  in  sight  of  the  same 
landmarks,  and  in  the  same  quaint,  patriarchal  way 
their  ancestors  did  more  than  thirty  centuries  ago. 
I  found  myself  gazing  at  any  straggling  scion  of 
this  strange  race  with  a  riveted  fascination,  just  as 
one  would  stare  at  a  living  mastodon,  or  a  megather- 
ium that  had  moved  in  the  gray  dawn  of  creation  and 
seen  the  wonders  of  that  mysterious  world  that  was 
before  the  flood. 

Carefully  preserved  among  the  sacred  archives  of 
this  curious  community  is  a  MS.  copy  of  the  ancient 
Jewish  law,  which  is  said  to  be  the  oldest  document 
on  earth.  It  is  written  on  vellum,  and  is  some  four 
or  five  thousand  years  old.  Nothing  but  bucksheesh 
can  purchase  a  sight.  Its  fame  is  somewhat  dimmed 
in  these  latter  days,  because  of  the  doubts  so  many 
authors  of  Palestine  travels  have  felt  themselves 
privileged  to  cast  upon  it.     Speaking  of  this  MS. 

290 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

reminds  me  that  I  procured  from  the  high  priest  of 
this  ancient  Samaritan  community,  at  great  ex- 
pense, a  secret  document  of  still  higher  antiquity  and 
far  more  extraordinary  interest,  which  I  propose  to 
publish  as  soon  as  I  have  finished  translating  it. 

Joshua  gave  his  dying  injunction  to  the  children 
of  Israel  at  Shechem,  and  buried  a  valuable  treasure 
secretly  under  an  oak  tree  there  about  the  same 
time.  The  superstitious  Samaritans  have  always 
been  afraid  to  hunt  for  it.  They  believe  it  is  guarded 
by  fierce  spirits  invisible  to  men. 

About  a  mile  and  a  half  from  Shechem  we  halted 
at  the  base  of  Mount  Ebal,  before  a  little  square 
area,  inclosed  by  a  high  stone  wall,  neatly  white- 
washed. Across  one  end  of  this  inclosure  is  a  tomb 
built  after  the  manner  of  the  Moslems.  It  is  the 
tomb  of  Joseph.  No  truth  is  better  authenticated 
than  this. 

When  Joseph  was  dying  he  prophesied  that  exodus 
of  the  Israelites  from  Egypt  which  occurred  four 
hundred  years  afterward.  At  the  same  time  he 
exacted  of  his  people  an  oath  that  when  they  jour- 
neyed to  the  land  of  Canaan,  they  would  bear  his 
bones  with  them  and  bury  them  in  the  ancient 
inheritance  of  his  fathers.     The  oath  was  kept. 

And  the  bones  of  Joseph,  which  the  children  of  Israel  brought 
up  out  of  Egypt,  buried  they  in  Shechem,  in  a  parcel  of  ground 
which  Jacob  bought  of  the  sons  of  Hamor  the  father  of  Shechem, 
for  a  hundred  pieces  of  silver. 

Few  tombs  on  earth  command  the  veneration  of 
so  many  races  and  men  of  divers  creeds  as  this  of 
Joseph.     "Samaritan  and  Jew,  Moslem  and  Chris- 

291 


MARK    TWAIN 

tian  alike,  revere  it,  and  honor  it  with  their  visi . ,. 
The  tomb  of  Joseph,  the  dutiful  son,  the  affection- 
ate, forgiving  brother,  the  virtuous  man,  the  wise 
Prince  and  ruler.  Egypt  felt  his  influence — the 
world  knows  his  history." 

In  this  same  "parcel  of  ground"  which  Jacob 
bought  of  the  sons  of  Hamor  for  a  hundred  pieces 
of  silver,  is  Jacob's  celebrated  well.  It  is  cut  in  the 
solid  rock,  and  is  nine  feet  square  and  ninety  feet 
deep.  The  name  of  this  unpretending  hole  in  the 
ground,  which  one  might  pass  by  and  take  no  notice 
of,  is  as  familiar  as  household  words  to  even  the 
children  and  the  peasants  of  many  a  far-off  country. 

It  is  more  famous  than  the  Parthenon;  it  is  older 
than  the  Pyramids. 

It  was  by  this  well  that  Jesus  sat  and  talked  with 
a  woman  of  that  strange,  antiquated  Samaritan  com- 
munity I  have  been  speaking  of,  and  told  her  of  the 
mysterious  water  of  life.  As  descendants  of  old 
English  nobles  still  cherish  in  the  traditions  of  their 
houses  how  that  this  king  or  that  king  tarried  a  day 
with  some  favored  ancestor  three  hundred  years  ago, 
no  doubt  the  descendants  of  the  woman  of  Samaria, 
living  there  in  Shechem,  still  refer  with  pardonable 
vanity  to  this  conversation  of  their  ancestor,  held 
some  little  time  gone  by,  with  the  Messiah  of  the 
Christians.  It  is  not  likely  that  they  undervalue  a 
distinction  such  as  this.  Samaritan  nature  is  human 
nature,  and  human  nature  remembers  contact  with 
the  illustrious,  always. 

For  an  offense  done  to  the  family  honor,  the  sons 
of  Jacob  exterminated  all  Shechem  once. 

292 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

We  left  Jacob's  Well  and  traveled  till  eight  in  the 
evening,  but  rather  slowly,  for  we  had  been  in  the 
saddle  nineteen  hours,  and  the  horses  were  cruelly- 
tired.  We  got  so  far  ahead  of  the  tents  that  we  had 
to  camp  in  an  Arab  village,  and  sleep  on  the  ground. 
We  could  have  slept  in  the  largest  of  the  houses; 
but  there  were  some  little  drawbacks ;  it  was  popu- 
lous with  vermin,  it  had  a  dirt  floor,  it  was  in  no 
respect  cleanly,  and  there  was  a  family  of  goats  in 
me  only  bedroom,  and  two  donkeys  in  the  parlor. 
Outside  there  were  no  inconveniences,  except  that 
the  dusky,  ragged,  earnest-eyed  villagers  of  both 
sexes  and  all  ages  grouped  themselves  on  their 
haunches  all  around  us,  and  discussed  us  and  criti- 
cised us  with  noisy  tongues  till  midnight.  We  did 
not  mind  the  noise,  being  tired,  but,  doubtless,  the 
reader  is  aware  that  it  is  almost  an  impossible  thing 
to  go  to  sleep  when  you  know  that  people  are 
looking  at  you.  We  went  to  bed  at  ten,  and  got  up 
again  at  two  and  started  once  more.  Thus  are 
people  persecuted  by  dragomans,  whose  sole  ambi- 
tion in  life  is  to  get  ahead  of  each  other. 

About  daylight  we  passed  Shiloh,  where  the  Ark 
of  the  Covenant  rested  three  hundred  years,  and  at 
whose  gates  good  old  Eli  fell  down  and  "brake  his 
neck"  when  the  messenger,  riding  hard  from  the 
battle,  told  him  of  the  defeat  of  his  people,  the 
death  of  his  sons,  and,  more  than  all,  the  capture  of 
Israel's  pride,  her  hope,  her  refuge,  the  ancient  Ark 
her  forefathers  brought  with  them  out  of  Egypt.  It 
is  little  wonder  that  under  circumstances  like  these 
he  fell  down  and  brake  his  neck.     But  Shiloh  had 

293 


MARK    TWAIN 

no  charms  for  us.  We  were  so  cold  that  there  was 
no  comfort  but  in  motion,  and  so  drowsy  we  could 
hardly  sit  upon  the  horses. 

After  a  while  we  came  to  a  shapeless  mass  of 
ruins,  which  still  bears  the  name  of  Beth-el.  It  was 
here  that  Jacob  lay  down  and  had  that  superb  vision 
of  angels  flitting  up  and  down  a  ladder  that  reached 
from  the  clouds  to  earth,  and  caught  glimpses  of 
their  blessed  home  through  the  open  gates  of  Heaven. 

The  pilgrims  took  what  was  left  of  the  hallowed 
ruin,  and  we  pressed  on  toward  the  goal  of  our 
crusade,  renowned  Jerusalem. 

The  further  we  went  the  hotter  the  sun  got  and 
the  more  rocky  and  bare,  repulsive  and  dreary  the 
landscape  became.  There  could  not  have  been  more 
fragments  of  stone  strewn  broadcast  over  this  part 
of  the  world,  if  every  ten  square  feet  of  the  land 
had  been  occupied  by  a  separate  and  distinct  stone- 
cutter's establishment  for  an  age.  There  was  hardly 
a  tree  or  a  shrub  anywhere.  Even  the  olive  and 
the  cactus,  those  fast  friends  of  a  worthless  soil,  had 
almost  deserted  the  country.  No  landscape  exists 
that  is  more  tiresome  to  the  eye  than  that  which 
bounds  the  approaches  to  Jerusalem.  The  only 
difference  between  the  roads  and  the  surrounding 
country,  perhaps,  is  that  there  are  rather  more  rocks 
in  the  roads  than  in  the  surrounding  country. 

We  passed  Ramah  and  Beroth,  and  on  the  right 
saw  the  tomb  of  the  prophet  Samuel,  perched  high 
upon  a  commanding  eminence.  Still  no  Jerusalem 
came  in  sight.  We  hurried  on  impatiently.  We 
halted  a  moment  at  the  ancient  Fountain  of  Beira* 

294 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

but  its  stones,  worn  deeply  by  the  chins  of  thirsty 
animals  that  are  dead  and  gone  centuries  ago,  had 
no  interest  for  us — we  longed  to  see  Jerusalem. 
We  spurred  up  hill  after  hill,  and  usually  began  to 
stretch  our  necks  minutes  before  we  got  to  the  top 
— but  disappointment  always  followed — more  stupid 
hills  beyond — more  unsightly  landscape — no  Holy 
City. 

At  last,  away  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  ancient 
bits  of  wall  and  crumbling  arches  began  to  line  the 
way — we  toiled  up  one  more  hill,  and  every  pilgrim 
and  every  sinner  swung  his  hat  on  high !     Jerusalem ! 

Perched  on  its  eternal  hills,  white  and  domed  and 
solid,  massed  together  and  hooped  with  high  gray 
walls,  the  venerable  city  gleamed  in  the  sun.  So 
small!  Why,  it  was  no  larger  than  an  American 
village  of  four  thousand  inhabitants,  and  no  larger 
than  an  ordinary  Syrian  city  of  thirty  thousand. 
Jerusalem  numbers  only  fourteen  thousand  people. 

We  dismounted  and  looked,  without  speaking  a 
dozen  sentences,  across  the  wide  intervening  valley 
for  an  hour  or  more;  and  noted  those  prominent 
features  of  the  city  that  pictures  make  familiar  to  all 
men  from  their  school-days  till  their  death.  We 
could  recognize  the  Tower  of  Hippicus,  the  Mosque 
of  Omar,  the  Damascus  Gate,  the  Mount  of  Olives, 
the  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat,  the  Tower  of  David,  and 
the  Garden  of  Gethsemane — and  dating  from  these 
landmarks  could  tell  very  nearly  the  localities  of 
many  others  we  were  not  able  to  distinguish. 

I  record  it  here  as  a  notable  but  not  discreditable 
fact  that  not  even  our  pilgrims  wept.     I  think  there 

295 


MARK    TWAIN 

was  no  individual  in  the  party  whose  brain  was  not 
teeming  with  thoughts  and  images  and  memories 
invoked  by  the  grand  history  of  the  venerable  city 
that  lay  before  us,  but  still  among  them  all  was  no 
" voice  of  them  that  wept." 

There  was  no  call  for  tears.  Tears  would  have 
been  out  of  place.  The  thoughts  Jerusalem  suggests 
are  full  of  poetry,  sublimity,  and  more  than  all, 
dignity.  Such  thoughts  do  not  find  their  appro- 
priate expression  in  the  emotions  of  the  nursery. 

Just  after  noon  we  entered  these  narrow,  crooked 
streets,  by  the  ancient  and  the  famed  Damascus 
Gate,  and  now  for  several  hours  I  have  been  trying 
to  comprehend  that  I  am  actually  in  the  illustrious 
old  city  where  Solomon  dwelt,  where  Abraham  held 
converse  with  the  Deity,  and  where  walls  still  stand 
that  witnessed  the  spectacle  of  the  Crucifixion. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

A  FAST  walker  could  go  outside  the  walls  of 
Jerusalem  and  walk  entirely  around  the  city  in 
an  hour.  I  do  not  know  how  else  to  make  one 
understand  how  small  it  is.  The  appearance  of  the 
city  is  peculiar.  It  is  as  knobby  with  countless  little 
domes  as  a  prison  door  is  with  bolt-heads.  Every 
house  has  from  one  to  half  a  dozen  of  these  white 
plastered  domes  of  stone,  broad  and  low,  sitting  in 
the  center  of,  or  in  a  cluster  upon,  the  flat  roof. 
Wherefore,  when  one  looks  down  from  an  eminence, 
upon  the  compact  mass  of  houses  (so  closely  crowded 
together,  in  fact,  that  there  is  no  appearance  of 
streets  at  all,  and  so  the  city  looks  solid)  he  sees 
the  knobbiest  town  in  the  world,  except  Constanti- 
nople. It  looks  as  if  it  might  be  roofed,  from  center 
to  circumference,  with  inverted  saucers.  The  mo- 
notony of  the  view  is  interrupted  only  by  the  great 
Mosque  of  Omar,  the  Tower  of  Hippicus,  and  one 
or  two  other  buildings  that  rise  into  commanding 
prominence. 

The  houses  are  generally  two  stories  high,  built 
strongly  of  masonry,  whitewashed  or  plastered  out- 
side, and  have  a  cage  of  wooden  latticework  pro- 
jecting in  front  of  every  window.  To  reproduce  a 
Jerusalem  street,  it  would  only  be  necessary  to  up- 

297 


MARK    TWAIN 

end  a  chicken-coop  and  hang  it  before  each  window 
in  an  alley  of  American  houses. 

The  streets  are  roughly  and  badly  paved  with 
stone,  and  are  tolerably  crooked — enough  so  to 
make  each  street  appear  to  close  together  constantly 
and  come  to  an  end  about  a  hundred  yards  ahead  of 
a  pilgrim  as  long  as  he  chooses  to  walk  in  it.  Pro- 
jecting from  the  top  of  the  lower  story  of  many  of 
the  houses  is  a  very  narrow  porch-roof  or  shed, 
without  supports  from  below;  and  I  have  several 
times  seen  cats  jump  across  the  street  from  one  shed 
to  the  other  when  they  were  out  calling.  The  cats 
could  have  jumped  double  the  distance  without 
extraordinary  exertion.  I  mention  these  things  to 
give  an  idea  of  how  narrow  the  streets  are.  Since 
a  cat  can  jump  across  them  without  the  least  incon- 
venience, it  is  hardly  necessary  to  state  that  such 
streets  are  too  narrow  for  carriages.  These  vehicles 
cannot  navigate  the  Holy  City. 

The  population  of  Jerusalem  is  composed  of  Mos- 
lems, Jews,  Greeks,  Latins,  Armenians,  Syrians, 
Copts,  Abyssinians,  Greek  Catholics,  and  a  handful 
of  Protestants.  One  hundred  of  the  latter  sect  are 
all  that  dwell  now  in  this  birthplace  of  Christianity. 
The  nice  shades  of  nationality  comprised  in  the 
above  list,  and  the  languages  spoken  by  them,  are 
altogether  too  numerous  to  mention.  It  seems  to 
me  that  all  the  races  and  colors  and  tongues  of  the 
earth  must  be  represented  among  the  fourteen  thou- 
sand souls  that  dwell  in  Jerusalem.  Rags,  wretched- 
ness, poverty,  and  dirt,  those  signs  and  symbols  that 
indicate  the  presence  of  Moslem  rule  more  surely 

298 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

than  the  crescent  flag  itself,  abound.  Lepers,  crip- 
ples, the  blind,  and  the  idiotic,  assail  you  on  every 
hand,  and  they  know  but  one  word  of  but  one 
language  apparently — the  eternal  "bucksheesh." 
To  see  the  numbers  of  maimed,  malformed,  and  dis- 
eased humanity  that  throng  the  holy  places  and 
obstruct  the  gates,  one  might  suppose  that  the  an- 
cient days  had  come  again,  and  that  the  angel  of 
the  Lord  was  expected  to  descend  at  any  moment  to 
stir  the  waters  of  Bethesda.  Jerusalem  is  mournful, 
and  dreary,  and  lifeless.  I  would  not  desire  to  live 
here. 

One  naturally  goes  first  to  the  Holy  Sepulcher. 
It  is  right  in  the  city,  near  the  western  gate;  it  and 
the  place  of  the  Crucifixion,  and,  in  fact,  every  other 
place  intimately  connected  with  that  tremendous 
event,  are  ingeniously  massed  together  and  covered 
by  one  roof — the  dome  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulcher. 

Entering  the  building,  through  the  midst  of  the 
usual  assemblage  of  beggars,  one  sees  on  his  left  a 
few  Turkish  guards — for  Christians  of  different 
sects  will  not  only  quarrel,  but  fight,  also,  in  this 
sacred  place,  if  allowed  to  do  it.  Before  you  is  a 
marble  slab,  which  covers  the  Stone  of  Unction, 
whereon  the  Saviour's  body  was  laid  to  prepare  it 
for  burial.  It  was  found  necessary  to  conceal  the 
real  stone  in  this  way  in  order  to  save  it  from  de- 
struction. Pilgrims  were  too  much  given  to  chip- 
ping off  pieces  of  it  to  carry  home.  Near  by  is  a 
circular  railing  which  marks  the  spot  where  the 
Virgin  stood  when  the  Lord's  body  was  anointed. 

299 


MARK    TWAIN 

Entering  the  great  Rotunda,  we  stand  before  the 
most  sacred  locality  in  Christendom — the  grave  of 
Jesus.  It  is  in  the  center  of  the  church,  and  imme- 
diately under  the  great  dome.  It  is  inclosed  in  a 
sort  of  little  temple  of  yellow  and  white  stone,  of 
fanciful  design.  Within  the  little  temple  is  a  por- 
tion of  the  very  stone  which  was  rolled  away  from 
the  door  of  the  Sepulcher,  and  on  which  the  angel 
was  sitting  when  Mary  came  thither  "at  early 
dawn."  Stooping  low,  we  enter  the  vault — the 
Sepulcher  itself.  It  is  only  about  six  feet  by  seven, 
and  the  stone  couch  on  which  the  dead  Saviour  lay 
extends  from  end  to  end  of  the  apartment  and  occu- 
pies half  its  width.  It  is  covered  with  a  marble  slab 
which  had  been  much  worn  by  the  lips  of  pilgrims. 
This  slab  serves  as  an  altar  now.  Over  it  hang 
some  fifty  gold  and  silver  lamps,  which  are  kept 
always  burning,  and  the  place  is  otherwise  scandal- 
ized by  trumpery  gewgaws  and  tawdry  ornamentation. 

All  sects  of  Christians  (except  Protestants)  have 
chapels  under  the  roof  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulcher,  and  each  must  keep  to  itself  and  not 
venture  upon  another's  ground.  It  has  been  proven 
conclusively  that  they  cannot  worship  together 
around  the  grave  of  the  Saviour  of  the  World  in 
peace.  The  chapel  of  the  Syrians  is  not  handsome; 
that  of  the  Copts  is  the  humblest  of  them  all.  It  is 
nothing  but  a  dismal  cavern,  roughly  hewn  in  the 
living  rock  of  the  Hill  of  Calvary.  In  one  side  of  it 
two  ancient  tombs  are  hewn,  which  are  claimed  to 
be  those  in  which  Nicodemus  and  Joseph  of  Arima- 
thea  were  buried. 

300 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

As  we  moved  among  the  great  piers  and  pillars  of 
another  part  of  the  church,  we  came  upon  a  party 
of  black-robed,  animal-looking  Italian  monks,  with 
candles  in  their  hands,  who  were  chanting  something 
in  Latin,  and  going  through  some  kind  of  religious 
performance  around  a  disk  of  white  marble  let  into 
the  floor.  It  was  there  that  the  risen  Saviour  ap- 
peared to  Mary  Magdalen  in  the  likeness  of  a  gar- 
dener. Near  by  was  a  similar  stone,  shaped  like  a 
star — here  the  Magdalen  herself  stood,  at  the  same 
time.  Monks  were  performing  in  this  place,  also. 
They  perform  everywhere — all  over  the  vast  build- 
ing, and  at  all  hours.  Their  candles  are  always 
flitting  about  in  the  gloom,  and  making  the  dim  old 
church  more  dismal  than  there  is  any  necessity  that 
it  should  be,  even  though  it  is  a  tomb. 

We  were  shown  the  place  where  our  Lord  ap- 
peared to  His  mother  after  the  Resurrection.  Here, 
also,  a  marble  slab  marks  the  place  where  St. 
Helena,  the  mother  of  the  Emperor  Cons  tan  tine, 
found  the  crosses  about  three  hundred  years  after 
the  Crucifixion.  According  to  the  legend,  this  great 
discovery  elicited  extravagant  demonstrations  of  joy. 
But  they  were  of  short  duration.  The  question 
intruded  itself:  "Which  bore  the  blessed  Saviour, 
and  which  the  thieves?"  To  be  in  doubt,  in  so 
mighty  a  matter  as  this — to  be  uncertain  which  one 
to  adore — was  a  grievous  misfortune.  It  turned 
the  public  joy  to  sorrow.  But  when  lived  there  a 
holy  priest  who  could  not  set  so  simple  a  trouble  as 
this  at  rest?  One  of  these  soon  hit  upon  a  plan 
that  would  be  a  certain  test.     A  noble  lady  lay  very 

301 


MARK    TWAIN 

ill  in  Jerusalem.  The  wise  priests  ordered  that  the 
three  crosses  be  taken  to  her  bedside  one  at  a  time. 
It  was  done.  When  her  eyes  fell  upon  the  first  one, 
she  uttered  a  scream  that  was  heard  beyond  the 
Damascus  Gate,  and  even  upon  the  Mount  of  Olives, 
it  was  said,  and  then  fell  back  in  a  deadly  swoon. 
They  recovered  her  and  brought  the  second  cross. 
Instantly  she  went  into  fearful  convulsions,  and  it 
was  with  the  greatest  difficulty  that  six  strong  men 
could  hold  her.  They  were  afraid,  now,  to  bring  in 
the  third  cross.  They  began  to  fear  that  possibly 
they  had  fallen  upon  the  wrong  crosses,  and  that  the 
true  cross  was  not  with  this  number  at  all.  How- 
ever, as  the  woman  seemed  likely  to  die  with  the 
convulsions  that  were  tearing  her,  they  concluded 
that  the  third  could  do  no  more  than  put  her  out  of 
her  misery  with  a  happy  despatch.  So  they  brought 
it,  and  behold,  a  miracle!  The  woman  sprang  from 
her  bed,  smiling  and  joyful,  and  perfectly  restored 
to  health.  When  we  listen  to  evidence  like  this,  we 
cannot  but  believe.  We  would  be  ashamed  to  doubt, 
and  properly,  too.  Even  the  very  part  of  Jerusalem 
where  this  all  occurred  is  there  yet.  So  there  is 
really  no  room  for  doubt. 

The  priest  tried  to  show  us,  through  a  small 
screen,  a  fragment  of  the  genuine  Pillar  of  Flagella- 
tion, to  which  Christ  was  bound  when  they  scourged 
him.  But  we  could  not  see  it,  because  it  was  dark 
inside  the  screen.  However,  a  baton  is  kept  here, 
which  the  pilgrim  thrusts  through  a  hole  in  the 
screen,  and  then  he  no  longer  doubts  that  the  true 
Pillar  of  Flagellation  is  in  there.     He  cannot  have 

302 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

any  excuse  to  doubt  it,  for  he  can  feel  it  with  the 
stick.  He  can  feel  it  as  distinctly  as  he  could  feel 
anything. 

Not  far  from  here  was  a  niche  where  they  used  to 
preserve  a  piece  of  the  True  Cross,  but  it  is  gone 
now.  This  piece  of  the  cross  was  discovered  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  The  Latin  priests  say  it  was 
stolen  away,  long  ago,  by  priests  of  another  sect. 
That  seems  like  a  hard  statement  to  make,  but  we 
know  very  well  that  it  was  stolen,  because  we  have 
seen  it  ourselves  in  several  of  the  cathedrals  of  Italy 
and  France. 

But  the  relic  that  touched  us  most  was  the  plain 
old  sword  of  that  stout  Crusader,  Godfrey  of  Bouillon 
— King  Godfrey  of  Jerusalem.  No  blade  in  Christen- 
dom wields  such  enchantment  as  this — no  blade 
of  all  that  rust  in  the  ancestral  halls  of  Europe  is 
able  to  invoke  such  visions  of  romance  in  the  brain 
of  him  who  looks  upon  it — none  that  can  prate  of 
such  chivalric  deeds  or  tell  such  brave  tales  of  the 
warrior  days  of  old.  It  stirs  within  a  man  every 
memory  of  the  Holy  Wars  that  has  been  sleeping 
in  his  brain  for  years,  and  peoples  his  thoughts 
with  mail-clad  images,  with  marching  armies,  with 
battles  and  with  sieges.  It  speaks  to  him  of  Bald- 
win, and  Tancred,  the  princely  Saladin,  and  great 
Richard  of  the  Lion  Heart.  It  was  with  just  such 
blades  as  these  that  these  splendid  heroes  of  romance 
used  to  segregate  a  man,  so  to  speak,  and  leave  the 
half  of  him  to  fall  one  way  and  the  other  half  the 
other.  This  very  sword  has  cloven  hundreds  of 
Saracen  Knights  from  crown  to  chin  in  those  old 

303 


MARK    TWAIN 

times  when  Godfrey  wielded  it.  It  was  enchanted, 
then,  by  a  genius  that  was  under  the  command  of 
King  Solomon.  When  danger  approached  its  mas- 
ter's tent  it  always  struck  the  shield  and  clanged 
out  a  fierce  alarm  upon  the  startled  ear  of  night.  In 
times  of  doubt,  or  in  fog  or  darkness,  if  it  were  drawn 
from  its  sheath  it  would  point  instantly  toward 
the  foe,  and  thus  reveal  the  way — and  it  would 
also  attempt  to  start  after  them  of  its  own  acco/d. 
A  Christian  could  not  be  so  disguised  that  it  would 
not  know  him  and  refuse  to  hurt  him — nor  a  Mos- 
lem so  disguised  that  it  would  not  leap  from  its 
scabbard  and  take  his  life.  These  statements  are  all 
well  authenticated  in  many  legends  that  are  among 
the  most  trustworthy  legends  the  good  old  Catholic 
monks  preserve.  I  can  never  forget  old  Godfrey's 
sword  now.  I  tried  it  on  a  Moslem,  and  clove  him 
in  twain  like  a  doughnut.  The  spirit  of  Grimes  was 
upon  me,  and  if  I  had  had  a  graveyard  I  would  have 
destroyed  all  the  infidels  in  Jerusalem.  I  wiped  the 
blood  off  the  old  sword  and  handed  it  back  to  the 
priest — I  did  not  want  the  fresh  gore  to  obliterate 
those  sacred  spots  that  crimsoned  its  brightness  one 
day  six  hundred  years  ago  and  thus  gave  Godfrey 
warning  that  before  the  sun  went  down  his  journey 
of  life  would  end. 

Still  moving  through  the  gloom  of  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Sepulcher  we  came  to  a  small  chapel, 
hewn  out  of  the  rock — a  place  which  has  been 
known  as  "The  Prison  of  Our  Lord"  for  many 
centuries.  Tradition  says  that  here  the  Saviour  was 
confined  just  previously  to  the  crucifixion.     Under 

304 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

an  altar  by  the  door  was  a  pair  of  stone  stocks  for 
human  legs.  These  things  are  called  the  "Bonds 
of  Christ,"  and  the  use  they  were  once  put  to  has 
given  them  the  name  they  now  bear. 

The  Greek  Chapel  is  the  most  roomy,  the  richest 
and  the  showiest  chapel  in  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulcher.  Its  altar,  like  that  of  all  the 
Greek  churches,  is  a  lofty  screen  that  extends  clear 
across  the  chapel,  and  is  gorgeous  with  gilding 
and  pictures.  The  numerous  lamps  that  hang 
before  it  are  of  gold  and  silver,  and  cost  great 
sums. 

But  the  feature  of  the  place  is  a  short  column  that 
rises  from  the  middle  of  the  marble  pavement  of  the 
chapel,  and  marks  the  exact  center  of  the  earth. 
The  most  reliable  traditions  tell  us  that  this  was 
known  to  be  the  earth's  center,  ages  ago,  and  that 
when  Christ  was  upon  earth  he  set  all  doubts  upon 
the  subject  at  rest  forever,  by  stating  with  his  own 
lips  that  the  tradition  was  correct.  Remember  He 
said  that  that  particular  column  stood  upon  the 
center  of  the  world.  If  the  center  of  the  world 
changes,  the  column  changes  its  position  accordingly. 
This  column  has  moved  three  different  times,  of  its 
own  accord.  This  is  because,  in  great  convulsions 
of  nature,  at  three  different  times,  masses  of  the 
earth — whole  ranges  of  mountains,  probably — have 
flown  off  into  space,  thus  lessening  the  diameter  of 
the  earth,  and  changing  the  exact  locality  of  its 
center  by  a  point  or  two.  This  is  a  very  curious 
and  interesting  circumstance,  and  is  a  withering 
rebuke  to  those  philosophers  who  would  make  us 

305 


MARK    TWAIN 

belisve  that  it  is  not  possible  for  any  portion  of  the 
earth  to  fly  off  into  space. 

To  satisfy  himself  that  this  spot  was  really  the 
center  of  the  earth,  a  skeptic  once  paid  well  for  the 
privilege  of  ascending  to  the  dome  of  the  church  to 
see  if  the  sun  gave  him  a  shadow  at  noon.  He 
came  down  perfectly  convinced.  The  day  was  very 
cloudy  and  the  sun  threw  no  shadows  at  all;  but 
the  man  was  satisfied  that  if  the  sun  had  come  out 
and  made  shadows  it  could  not  have  made  any  for 
him.  Proofs  like  these  are  not  to  be  set  aside  by 
the  idle  tongues  of  cavilers.  To  such  as  are  not 
bigoted,  and  are  willing  to  be  convinced,  they  carry 
a  conviction  that  nothing  can  ever  shake. 

If  even  greater  proofs  than  those  I  have  men- 
tioned are  wanted,  to  satisfy  the  headstrong  and  the 
foolish  that  this  is  the  genuine  center  of  the  earth, 
they  are  here.  The  greatest  of  them  lies  in  the  fact 
that  from  under  this  very  column  was  taken  the  dust 
from  which  Adam  was  made.  This  can  surely  be 
regarded  in  the  light  of  a  settler.  It  is  not  likely 
that  the  original  first  man  would  have  been  made 
from  an  inferior  quality  of  earth  when  it  was  entirely 
convenient  to  get  first  quality  from  the  world's 
center.  This  will  strike  any  reflecting  mind  forcibly. 
That  Adam  was  formed  of  dirt  procured  in  this  very 
spot  is  amply  proven  by  the  fact  that  in  six  thousand 
years  no  man  has  ever  been  able  to  prove  that  the 
dirt  was  not  procured  here  whereof  he  was  made. 

It  is  a  singular  circumstance  that  right  under  the 
roof  of  this  same  great  church,  and  not  far  away 
from  that  illustrious   column,   Adam  himself,   the 

306 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

father  of  the  human  race,  lies  buried.  There  is  no 
question  that  he  is  actually  buried  in  the  grave  which 
is  pointed  out  as  his — there  can  be  none — because 
it  has  never  yet  been  proven  that  that  grave  is  not 
the  grave  in  which  he  is  buried. 

The  tomb  of  Adam!  How  touching  it  was,  here 
in  a  land  of  strangers,  far  away  from  home,  and 
friends,  and  all  who  cared  for  me,  thus  to  discover 
the  grave  of  a  blood  relation.  True,  a  distant  one, 
but  still  a  relation.  The  unerring  instinct  of  nature 
thrilled  its  recognition.  The  fountain  of  my  filial 
affection  was  stirred  to  its  profoundest  depths,  and 
I  gave  way  to  tumultuous  emotion.  I  leaned  upon 
a  pillar  and  burst  into  tears.  I  deem  it  no  shame  to 
have  wept  over  the  grave  of  my  poor  dead  relative. 
Let  him  who  would  sneer  at  my  emotion  close  this 
volume  here,  for  he  will  find  little  to  his  taste  in  my 
journeyings  through  Holy  Land.  Noble  old  man — 
he  did  not  live  to  see  me — he  did  not  live  to  see 
his  child.  And  I — I — alas,  I  did  not  live  to  see 
him.  Weighed  down  by  sorrow  and  disappoint- 
ment, he  died  before  I  was  born — six  thousand 
brief  summers  before  I  was  born.  But  let  us  try  to 
bear  it  with  fortitude.  Let  us  trust  that  he  is  better 
off  where  he  is.  Let  us  take  comfort  in  the  thought 
that  his  loss  is  our  eternal  gain. 

The  next  place  the  guide  took  us  to  in  the  holy 
church  was  an  altar  dedicated  to  the  Roman  soldier 
who  was  of  the  military  guard  that  attended  at  the 
Crucifixion  to  keep  order,  and  who — when  the  veil 
of  the  Temple  was  rent  in  the  awful  darkness  that 
followed;    when  the  rock  of   Golgotha  was   split 

307 


MARK    TWAIN 

asunder  by  an  earthquake;  when  the  artillery  of 
heaven  thundered,  and  in  the  baleful  glare  of  the 
lightnings  the  shrouded  dead  flitted  about  the  streets 
of  Jerusalem — shook  with  fear  and  said,  ''Surely 
this  was  the  Son  of  God!"  Where  this  altar  stands 
now,  that  Roman  soldier  stood  then,  in  full  view  of 
the  crucified  Saviour — in  full  sight  and  hearing  of 
all  the  marvels  that  were  transpiring  far  and  wide 
about  the  circumference  of  the  Hill  of  Calvary. 
And  in  this  selfsame  spot  the  priests  of  the  Temple 
beheaded  him  for  those  blasphemous  words  he  had 
spoken. 

In  this  altar  they  used  to  keep  one  of  the  most 
curious  relics  that  human  eyes  ever  looked  upon — 
a  thing  that  had  power  to  fascinate  the  beholder  in 
some  mysterious  way  and  keep  him  gazing  for  hours 
together.  It  was  nothing  less  than  the  copper  plate 
Pilate  put  upon  the  Saviour's  cross,  and  upon  which 
he  wrote,  "This  is  the  King  of  the  Jews."  I 
think  St.  Helena,  the  mother  of  Constantine,  found 
this  wonderful  memento  when  she  was  here  in  the 
third  century.  She  traveled  all  over  Palestine,  and 
was  always  fortunate.  Whenever  the  good  old  en- 
thusiast found  a  thing  mentioned  in  her  Bible,  Old 
or  New,  she  would  go  and  search  for  that  thing,  and 
never  stop  until  she  found  it.  If  it  was  Adam,  she 
would  find  Adam;  if  it  was  the  Ark,  she  would  find 
the  Ark;  if  it  was  Goliah,  or  Joshua,  she  would 
find  them.  She  found  the  inscription  here  that  I 
was  speaking  of,  I  think.  She  found  it  in  this  very 
spot,  close  to  where  the  martyred  Roman  soldier 
stood.     That  copper  plate  is  in  one  of  the  churches 

308 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

in  Rome  now.  Any  one  can  see  it  there.  The 
inscription  is  very  distinct. 

We  passed  along  a  few  steps  and  saw  the  altar  built 
over  the  very  spot  where  the  good  Catholic  priests 
say  the  soldiers  divided  the  raiment  of  the  Saviour. 

Then  we  went  down  into  a  cavern  which  cavilers 
say  was  once  a  cistern.  It  is  a  chapel  now,  how- 
ever— the  Chapel  of  St.  Helena.  It  is  fifty-one 
feet  long  by  forty-three  wide.  In  it  is  a  marble 
chair  which  Helena  used  to  sit  in  while  she  superin- 
tended her  workmen  when  they  were  digging  and 
delving  for  the  True  Cross.  In  this  place  is  an  altar 
dedicated  to  St.  Dimas,  the  penitent  thief.  A  new 
bronze  statue  is  here — a  statue  of  St.  Helena.  It 
reminded  us  of  poor  Maximilian,  so  lately  shot. 
He  presented  it  to  this  chapel  when  he  was  about  to 
leave  for  his  throne  in  Mexico. 

From  the  cistern  we  descended  twelve  steps  into 
a  large  roughly  shaped  grotto,  carved  wholly  out  of 
the  living  rock.  Helena  blasted  it  out  when  she  was 
searching  for  the  true  cross.  She  had  a  laborious 
piece  of  work  here,  but  it  was  richly  rewarded.  Out 
of  this  place  she  got  the  crown  of  thorns,  the  nails 
of  the  cross,  the  true  cross  itself,  and  the  cross  of 
the  penitent  thief.  When  she  thought  she  had  found 
everything  and  was  about  to  stop,  she  was  told  in  a 
dream  to  continue  a  day  longer.  It  was  very  for- 
tunate. She  did  so,  and  found  the  cross  of  the 
other  thief. 

The  walls  and  roof  of  this  grotto  still  weep  bitter 
tears  in  memory  of  the  event  that  transpired  on 
Calvary,  and  devout  pilgrims  groan  and  sob  when 

309 


MARK    TWAIN 

these  sad  tears  fall  upon  them  from  the  dripping 
rock.  The  monks  call  this  apartment  the  "Chapel 
of  the  Invention  of  the  Cross" — a  name  which  is 
unfortunate,  because  it  leads  the  ignorant  to  imagine 
that  a  tacit  acknowledgment  is  thus  made  that  the 
tradition  that  Helena  found  the  true  cross  here  is  a 
fiction — an  invention.  It  is  a  happiness  to  know, 
however,  that  intelligent  people  do  not  doubt  the 
story  in  any  of  its  particulars. 

Priests  of  any  of  the  chapels  and  denominations 
in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulcher  can  visit  this 
sacred  grotto  to  weep  and  pray  and  worship  the 
gentle  Redeemer.  Two  different  congregations  are 
not  allowed  to  enter  at  the  same  time,  however,  be- 
cause they  always  fight. 

Still  marching  through  the  venerable  Church  of 
the  Holy  Sepulcher,  among  chanting  priests  in 
coarse  long  robes  and  sandals;  pilgrims  of  all  colors 
and  many  nationalities,  in  all  sorts  of  strange  cos- 
tumes; under  dusky  arches  and  by  dingy  piers  and 
columns;  through  a  somber  cathedral  gloom,  freight- 
ed with  smoke  and  incense,  and  faintly  starred  with 
scores  of  candles  that  appeared  suddenly  and  as 
suddenly  disappeared,  or  drifted  mysteriously  hither 
and  thither  about  the  distant  aisles  like  ghostly 
jack-o'-lanterns — we  came  at  last  to  a  small  chapel 
which  is  called  the  "Chapel  of  the  Mocking." 
Under  the  altar  was  a  fragment  of  a  marble  column ; 
this  was  the  seat  Christ  sat  on  when  he  was  reviled, 
and  mockingly  made  King,  crowned  with  a  crown 
of  thorns  and  sceptered  with  a  reed.  It  was  here 
that  they  blindfolded  him  and  struck  him,  and  said 

310 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

in  derision,  "Prophesy  who  it  is  that  smote  thee." 
The  tradition  that  this  is  the  identical  spot  of  the 
mocking  is  a  very  ancient  one.  The  guide  said  that 
Saewulf  was  the  first  to  mention  it.  I  do  not  know 
Saewulf,  but  still,  I  cannot  well  refuse  to  receive 
his  evidence — none  of  us  can. 

They  showed  us  where  the  great  Godfrey  and  his 
brother  Baldwin,  the  first  Christian  Kings  of  Jerusa- 
lem, once  lay  buried  by  that  sacred  sepulcher  they 
had  fought  so  long  and  so  valiantly  to  wrest  from 
the  hands  of  the  infidel.  But  the  niches  that  had 
contained  the  ashes  of  these  renowned  crusaders 
were  empty.  Even  the  coverings  of  their  tombs 
were  gone — destroyed  by  devout  members  of  the 
Greek  church,  because  Godfrey  and  Baldwin  were 
Latin  princes,  and  had  been  reared  in  a  Christian 
faith  whose  creed  differed  in  some  unimportant  re- 
spects from  theirs. 

We  passed  on,  and  halted  before  the  tomb  of 
Melchisedek!  You  will  remember  Melchisedek,  no 
doubt;  he  was  the  King  who  came  out  and  levied  a 
tribute  on  Abraham  the  time  that  he  pursued  Lot's 
captors  to  Dan,  and  took  all  their  property  from 
them.  That  was  about  four  thousand  years  ago, 
and  Melchisedek  died  shortly  afterward.  However, 
his  tomb  is  in  a  good  state  of  preservation. 

When  one  enters  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepul- 
cher, the  Sepulcher  itself  is  the  first  thing  he  desires 
to  see,  and  really  is  almost  the  first  thing  he  does 
see.  The  next  thing  he  has  a  strong  yearning  to 
see  is  the  spot  where  the  Saviour  was  crucified.  But 
this  they  exhibit  last.     It  is  the  crowning  glory  of 

3ii 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  place.  One  is  grave  and  thoughtful  when  he 
stands  in  the  little  Tomb  of  the  Saviour — he  could 
not  well  be  otherwise  in  such  a  place — but  he  has 
not  the  slightest  possible  belief  that  ever  the  Lord 
lay  there,  and  so  the  interest  he  feels  in  the  spot  is 
very,  very  greatly  marred  by  that  reflection.  He 
looks  at  the  place  where  Mary  stood,  in  another 
part  of  the  church,  and  where  John  stood,  and  Mary 
Magdalen ;  where  the  mob  derided  the  Lord ;  where 
the  angel  sat ;  where  the  crown  of  thorns  was  found, 
and  the  true  cross;  where  the  risen  Saviour  ap- 
peared— he  looks  at  all  these  places  with  interest, 
but  with  the  same  conviction  he  felt  in  the  case  of  the 
Sepulcher,  that  there  is  nothing  genuine  about  them, 
and  that  they  are  imaginary  holy  places  created  by 
the  monks.  But  the  place  of  the  Crucifixion  affects 
him  differently.  He  fully  believes  that  he  is  looking 
upon  the  very  spot  where  the  Saviour  gave  up  his 
life.  He  remembers  that  Christ  was  very  celebrated, 
long  before  he  came  to  Jerusalem;  he  knows  that 
his  fame  was  so  great  that  crowds  followed  him  all 
the  time;  he  is  aware  that  his  entry  into  the  city 
produced  a  stirring  sensation,  and  that  his  reception 
was  a  kind  of  ovation;  he  cannot  overlook  the  fact 
that  when  he  was  crucified  there  were  very  many  in 
Jerusalem  who  believed  that  he  was  the  true  Son  of 
God.  To  publicly  execute  such  a  personage  was 
sufficient  in  itself  to  make  the  locality  of  the  execu- 
tion a  memorable  place  for  ages;  added  to  this,  the 
storm,  the  darkness,  the  earthquake,  the  rending  of 
the  veil  of  the  Temple,  and  the  untimely  waking  of 
the  dead,  were  events  calculated  to  fix  the  execution 

312 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  the  scene  of  it  in  the  memory  of  even  the  most 
thoughtless  witness.  Fathers  would  tell  their  sons 
about  the  strange  affair,  and  point  out  the  spot ;  the 
sons  would  transmit  the  story  to  their  children,  and 
thus  a  period  of  three  hundred  years  would  easily 
be  spanned1 — at  which  time  Helena  came  and  built 
a  church  upon  Calvary  to  commemorate  the  death 
and  burial  of  the  Lord  and  preserve  the  sacred  place 
in  the  memories  of  men;  since  that  time  there  has 
always  been  a  church  there.  It  is  not  possible  that 
there  can  be  any  mistake  about  the  locality  of  the 
Crucifixion.  Not  half  a  dozen  persons  knew  where 
they  buried  the  Saviour,  perhaps,  and  a  burial  is  not 
a  startling  event,  anyhow;  therefore,  we  can  be 
pardoned  for  unbelief  in  the  Sepulcher,  but  not 
in  the  place  of  the  Crucifixion.  Five  hundred 
years  hence  there  will  be  no  vestige  of  Bunker  Hill 
Monument  left,  but  America  will  still  know  where 
the  battle  was  fought  and  where  Warren  fell.  The 
crucifixion  of  Christ  was  too  notable  an  event  in 
Jerusalem,  and  the  Hill  of  Calvary  made  too  cele- 
brated by  it,  to  be  forgotten  in  the  short  space  of 
three  hundred  years.  I  climbed  the  stairway  in  the 
church  which  brings  one  to  the  top  of  the  small  in- 
closed pinnacle  of  rock,  and  looked  upon  the  place 
where  the  true  cross  once  stood,  with  a  far  more 
absorbing  interest  than  I  had  ever  felt  in  anything 
earthly  before.  I  could  not  believe  that  the  three 
holes  in  the  top  of  the  rock  were  the  actual  ones  the 
crosses  stood  in,  but  I  felt  satisfied  that  those  crosses 

1  The  thought,  is  Mr.  Prime's,  not  mine,  and  is  full  of  good  sen9e. 
1  borrowed  it  from  his  Tent  Life.—M.  T. 

313 


MARK    TWAIN 

had  stood  so  near  the  place  now  occupied  by  them, 
that  the  few  feet  of  possible  difference  were  a  matter 
of  no  consequence. 

When  one  stands  where  the  Saviour  was  crucified, 
he  finds  it  all  he  can  do  to  keep  it  strictly  before  his 
mind  that  Christ  was  not  crucified  in  a  Catholic 
church.  He  must  remind  himself  every  now  and 
then  that  the  great  event  transpired  in  the  open  air, 
and  not  in  a  gloomy,  candle-lighted  cell  in  a  little 
corner  of  a  vast  church,  up-stairs — a  small  cell  all 
bejeweled  and  bespangled  with  flashy  ornamenta- 
tion, in  execrable  taste. 

Under  a  marble  altar  like  a  table,  is  a  circular 
hole  in  the  marble  floor,  corresponding  with  the  one 
just  under  it  in  which  the  true  cross  stood.  The 
first  thing  every  one  does  is  to  kneel  down  and  take 
a  candle  and  examine  this  hole.  He  does  this 
strange  prospecting  with  an  amount  of  gravity  that 
can  never  be  estimated  or  appreciated  by  a  man 
who  has  not  seen  the  operation.  Then  he  holds  his 
candle  before  a  richly  engraved  picture  of  the 
Saviour,  done  on  a  massy  slab  of  gold,  and  wonder- 
fully rayed  and  starred  with  diamonds,  which  hangs 
above  the  hole  within  the  altar,  and  his  solemnity 
changes  to  lively  admiration.  He  rises  and  faces  the 
finely  wrought  figures  of  the  Saviour  and  the  male- 
factors uplifted  upon  their  crosses  behind  the  altar, 
and  bright  with  a  metallic  luster  of  many  colors. 
He  turns  next  to  the  figures  close  to  them  of  the 
Virgin  and  Mary  Magdalen;  next  to  the  rift  in  the 
living  rock  made  by  the  earthquake  at  the  time  of 
the  crucifixion,  and  an  extension  of  which  he  had 

3M 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

seen  before  in  the  wall  of  one  of  the  grottoes  below; 
he  looks  next  at  the  showcase  with  a  figure  of  the 
Virgin  in  it,  and  is  amazed  at  the  princely  fortune  in 
precious  gems  and  jewelry  that  hangs  so  thickly 
about  the  form  as  to  hide  it  like  a  garment  almost. 
All  about  the  apartment  the  gaudy  trappings  of  the 
Greek  church  offend  the  eye  and  keep  the  mind  on 
the  rack  to  remember  that  this  is  the  Place  of  the 
Crucifixion — Golgotha — the  Mount  of  Calvary.  And 
the  last  thing  he  looks  at  is  that  which  was  also 
the  first — the  place  where  the  true  cross  stood. 
That  will  chain  him  to  the  spot  and  compel  him  to 
look  once  more,  and  once  again,  after  he  has  satis- 
fied all  curiosity  and  lost  all  interest  concerning  the 
other  matters  pertaining  to  the  locality. 

And  so  I  close  my  chapter  on  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulcher — the  most  sacred  locality  on  earth 
to  millions  and  millions  of  men,  and  women,  and 
children,  the  noble  and  the  humble,  bond  and  free. 
In  its  history  from  the  first,  and  in  its  tremendous 
associations,  it  is  the  most  illustrious  edifice  in 
Christendom.  With  all  its  claptrap  side-shows  and 
unseemly  impostures  of  every  kind,  it  is  still  grand, 
reverend,  venerable — for  a  god  died  there;  for  fif- 
teen hundred  years  its  shrines  have  been  wet  with 
the  tears  of  pilgrims  from  the  earth's  remotest  con- 
fines; for  more  than  two  hundred,  the  most  gallant 
knights  that  ever  wielded  sword  wasted  their  lives 
away  in  a  struggle  to  seize  it  and  hold  it  sacred  from 
infidel  pollution.  Even  in  our  own  day  a  war,  that 
cost  millions  of  treasure  and  rivers  of  blood,  was 
fought  because  two  rival  nations  claimed  the  sole 

3i5 


MARK    TWAIN 

right  to  put  a  new  dome  upon  it.  History  is  full  of 
this  old  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulcher — full  of 
blood  that  was  shed  because  of  the  respect  and  the 
veneration  in  which  men  held  the  last  resting-place 
of  the  meek  and  lowly,  the  mild  and  gentle  Prince 
of  Peace! 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

WE  were  standing  in  a  narrow  street,  by  the 
Tower  of  Antonio.  "On  these  stones  that 
are  crumbling  away,"  the  guide  said,  "the  Saviour 
sat  and  rested  before  taking  up  the  cross.  This  is 
the  beginning  of  the  Sorrowful  Way,  or  the  Way  of 
Grief."  The  party  took  note  of  the  sacred  spot, 
and  moved  on.  We  passed  under  the  "Ecce  Homo 
Arch,"  and  saw  the  very  window  from  which  Pilate's 
wife  warned  her  husband  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  persecution  of  the  Just  Man.  The  window  is  in 
an  excellent  state  of  preservation,  considering  its 
great  age.  They  showed  us  where  Jesus  rested  the 
second  time,  and  where  the  mob  refused  to  give  him 
up,  and  said,  "Let  his  blood  be  upon  our  heads, 
and  upon  our  children's  children  forever."  The 
French  Catholics  are  building  a  church  on  this  spot, 
and  with  their  usual  veneration  for  historical  relics, 
are  incorporating  into  the  new  such  scraps  of  ancient 
walls  as  they  have  found  there.  Further  on,  we  saw 
the  spot  where  the  fainting  Saviour  fell  under  the 
weight  of  his  cross.  A  great  granite  column  of 
some  ancient  temple  lay  there  at  the  time,  and  the 
heavy  cross  struck  it  such  a  blow  that  it  broke  in 
two  in  the  middle.  Such  was  the  guide's  story 
when  he  halted  us  before  the  broken  column. 

3T* 


MARK    TWAIN 

We  crossed  a  street,  and  came  presently  to  the 
former  residence  of  St.  Veronica.  When  the  Saviour 
passed  there,  she  came  out,  full  of  womanly  com- 
passion, and  spoke  pitying  words  to  him,  undaunted 
by  the  hootings  and  the  threat enings  of  the  mob, 
and  wiped  the  perspiration  from  his  face  with  her 
handkerchief.  We  had  heard  so  much  of  St. 
Veronica,  and  seen  her  picture  by  so  many  masters, 
that  it  was  like  meeting  an  old  friend  unexpectedly 
to  come  upon  her  ancient  home  in  Jerusalem.  The 
strangest  thing  about  the  incident  that  has  made 
her  name  so  famous,  is,  that  when  she  wiped  the 
perspiration  away,  the  print  of  the  Saviour's  face 
remained  upon  the  handkerchief,  a  perfect  portrait, 
and  so  remains  unto  this  day.  We  knew  this, 
because  we  saw  this  handkerchief  in  a  cathedral  in 
Paris,  in  another  in  Spain,  and  in  two  others  in 
Italy.  In  the  Milan  cathedral  it  costs  five  francs  to 
see  it,  and  at  St.  Peter's,  at  Rome,  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  see  it  at  any  price.  No  tradition  is  so 
amply  verified  as  this  of  St.  Veronica  and  her  hand- 
kerchief. 

At  the  next  corner  we  saw  a  deep  indentation  in  the 
hard  stone  masonry  of  the  corner  of  a  house,  but 
might  have  gone  heedlessly  by  it  but  that  the  guide 
said  it  was  made  by  the  elbow  of  the  Saviour,  who 
stumbled  here  and  fell.  Presently  we  came  to  just 
such  another  indentation  in  a  stone  wall.  The  guide 
said  the  Saviour  fell  here,  also,  and  made  this  depres- 
sion with  his  elbow. 

There  were  other  places  where  the  Lord  fell,  and 
others  where  he  rested;  but  one  of  the  most  curious 

318 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

landmarks  of  ancient  history  we  found  on  this  morn- 
ing walk  through  the  crooked  lanes  that  lead  toward 
Calvary,  was  a  certain  stone  built  into  a  house — a 
stone  that  was  so  seamed  and  scarred  that  it  bore  a 
sort  of  grotesque  resemblance  to  the  human  face. 
The  projections  that  answered  for  cheeks  were  worn 
smooth  by  the  passionate  kisses  of  generations  of 
pilgrims  from  distant  lands.  We  asked  "Why?" 
The  guide  said  it  was  because  this  was  one  of  "the 
very  stones  of  Jerusalem"  that  Christ  mentioned 
when  he  was  reproved  for  permitting  the  people  to 
cry  "Hosannah!"  when  he  made  his  memorable 
entry  into  the  city  upon  an  ass.  One  of  the  pil- 
grims said,  ' '  But  there  is  no  evidence  that  the  stones 
did  cry  out — Christ  said  that  if  the  people  stopped 
from  shouting  Hosannah,  the  very  stones  would  do 
it."  The  guide  was  perfectly  serene.  He  said, 
calmly,  "This  is  one  of  the  stones  that  would  have 
cried  out."  It  was  of  little  use  to  try  to  shake  this 
fellow's  simple  faith — it  was  easy  to  see  that. 

And  so  we  came  at  last  to  another  wonder,  of 
deep  and  abiding  interest — the  veritable  house  where 
the  unhappy  wretch  once  lived  who  has  been  cele- 
brated in  song  and  story  for  more  than  eighteen 
hundred  years  as  the  Wandering  Jew.  On  the 
memorable  day  of  the  Crucifixion  he  stood  in  this 
old  doorway  with  his  arms  akimbo,  looking  out  upon 
the  struggling  mob  that  was  approaching,  and  when 
the  weary  Saviour  would  have  sat  down  and  rested 
him  a  moment,  pushed  him  rudely  away  and  said, 
"Move  on!"  The  Lord  said,  "Move  on,  thou, 
likewise,"  and  the  command  has  never  been  revoked 

3J9 


MARK    TWAIN 

from  that  day  to  this.  All  men  know  how  that  the 
miscreant  upon  whose  head  that  just  curse  fell  has 
roamed  up  and  down  the  wide  world,  for  ages  and 
ages,  seeking  rest  and  never  finding  it — courting 
death  but  always  in  vain — longing  to  stop,  in  city, 
in  wilderness,  in  desert  solitudes,  yet  hearing  always 
that  relentless  warning  to  march — march  on!  They 
say — do  these  hoary  traditions — that  when  Titus 
sacked  Jerusalem  and  slaughtered  eleven  hundred 
thousand  Jews  in  her  streets  and  byways,  the  Wan- 
dering Jew  was  seen  always  in  the  thickest  of  the 
fight,  and  that  when  battle-axes  gleamed  in  the  air, 
he  bowed  his  head  beneath  them;  when  swords 
flashed  their  deadly  lightnings,  he  sprang  in  their 
way;  he  bared  his  breast  to  whizzing  javeiins,  to 
hissing  arrows,  to  any  and  to  every  weapon  that 
promised  death  and  forgetfulness,  and  rest.  But  it 
was  useless — he  walked  forth  out  of  the  carnage 
without  a  wound.  And  it  is  said  that  five  hundred 
years  afterward  he  followed  Mohammed  when  he 
carried  destruction  to  the  cities  of  Arabia,  and  then 
turned  against  him,  hoping  in  this  way  to  win  the 
death  of  a  traitor.  His  calculations  were  wrong 
again.  No  quarter  was  given  to  any  living  creature 
but  one,  and  that  was  the  only  one  of  all  the  host 
that  did  not  want  it.  He  sought  death  five  hundred 
years  later,  in  the  wars  of  the  Crusades,  and  offered 
himself  to  famine  and  pestilence  at  Ascalon.  He 
escaped  again — he  could  not  die.  These  repeated 
annoyances  could  have  at  last  but  one  effect — they 
shook  his  confidence.  Since  then  the  Wandering 
Jew  has  carried  on  a  kind  of  desultory  toying  with 

320 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  most  promising  of  the  aids  and  implements  of 
destruction,  but  with  small  hope,  as  a  general  thing. 
He  has  speculated  some  in  cholera  and  railroads, 
and  has  taken  almost  a  lively  interest  in  infernal 
machines  and  patent  medicines.  He  is  old,  now, 
and  grave,  as  becomes  an  age  like  his;  he  indulges 
in  no  light  amusements  save  that  he  goes  sometimes 
to  executions,  and  is  fond  of  funerals. 

There  is  one  thing  he  cannot  avoid;  go  where  he 
will  about  the  world,  he  must  never  fail  to  report  in 
Jerusalem  every  fiftieth  year.  Only  a  year  or  two 
ago  he  was  here  for  the  thirty-seventh  time  since 
Jesus  was  crucified  on  Calvary.  They  say  that  many 
old  people,  who  are  here  now,  saw  him  then,  and  had 
seen  him  before.  He  looks  always  the  same — old, 
and  withered,  and  hollow-eyed,  and  listless,  save 
that  there  is  about  him  something  which  seems  to 
suggest  that  he  is  looking  for  some  one,  expecting 
some  one — the  friends  of  his  youth,  perhaps.  But 
the  most  of  them  are  dead,  now.  He  always  pokes 
about  the  old  streets  looking  lonesome,  making  his 
mark  on  a  wall  here  and  there,  and  eying  the  oldest 
buildings  with  a  sort  of  friendly  half  -interest ;  and 
he  sheds  a  few  tears  at  the  threshold  of  his  ancient 
dwelling,  and  bitter,  bitter  tears  they  are.  Then  he 
collects  his  rent  and  leaves  again.  He  has  been  seen 
standing  near  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulcher  on 
many  a  starlight  night,  for  he  has  cherished  an  idea 
for  many  centuries  that  if  he  could  only  enter  there, 
he  could  rest.  But  when  he  approaches,  the  doors 
slam  to  with  a  crash,  the  earth  trembles,  and  all  the 
lights  in  Jerusalem  burn  a  ghastly  blue!     He  does 

321 


MARK    TWAIN 

this  every  fifty  years,  just  the  same.  It  is  hopeless, 
but  then  it  is  hard  to  break  habits  one  has  been 
eighteen  hundred  years  accustomed  to.  The  old 
tourist  is  far  away  on  his  wanderings,  now.  How 
he  must  smile  to  see  a  pack  of  blockheads  like  us, 
galloping  about  the  world,  and  looking  wise,  and 
imagining  we  are  finding  out  a  good  deal  about  it! 
He  must  have  a  consuming  contempt  for  the  ignorant, 
complacent  asses  that  go  scurrying  about  the  world 
in  these  railroading  days  and  call  it  traveling. 

When  the  guide  pointed  out  where  the  Wandering 
lew  had  left  his  familiar  mark  upon  a  wall,  I  was 
filled  with  astonishment.     It  read : 

g.  T.— 1860— X. 

All  I  have  revealed  about  the  Wandering  Jew  can 
be  amply  proven  by  reference  to  our  guide. 

The  mighty  Mosque  of  Omar,  and  the  paved  court 
around  it,  occupy  a  fourth  part  of  Jerusalem.  They 
are  upon  Mount  Moriah,  where  King  Solomon's 
Temple  stood.  This  Mosque  is  the  holiest  place 
the  Mohammedan  knows,  outside  of  Mecca.  Up  to 
within  a  year  or  two  past,  no  Christian  could  gain 
admission  to  it  or  its  court  for  love  or  money.  But 
the  prohibition  has  been  removed,  and  we  entered 
freely  for  bucksheesh. 

I  need  not  speak  of  the  wonderful  beauty  and  the 
exquisite  grace  and  symmetry  that  have  made  this 
Mosque  so  celebrated — because  I  did  not  see  them. 
One  cannot  see  such  things  at  an  instant  glance — 
one  frequently  only  finds  out  how  really  beautiful  a 
really  beautiful  woman  is  after  considerable  acquaint- 

322 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ance  with  her ;  and  the  rule  applies  to  Niagara  Falls, 
to  majestic  mountains,  and  to  mosques — especially 
to  mosques. 

The  great  feature  of  the  Mosque  of  Omar  is  the 
prodigious  rock  in  the  center  of  its  rotunda.  It  was 
upon  this  rock  that  Abraham  came  so  near  offering 
up  his  son  Isaac — this,  at  least,  is  authentic — it  is 
very  much  more  to  be  relied  on  than  most  of  the 
traditions,  at  any  rate.  On  this  rock,  also,  the  angel 
stood  and  threatened  Jerusalem,  and  David  per- 
suaded him  to  spare  the  city.  Mohammed  was  well 
acquainted  with  this  stone.  From  it  he  ascended  to 
heaven.  The  stone  tried  to  follow  him,  and  if  the 
angel  Gabriel  had  not  happened  by  the  merest  good 
luck  to  be  there  to  seize  it,  it  would  have  done  it. 
Very  few  people  have  a  grip  like  Gabriel — the  prints 
of  his  monstrous  fingers,  two  inches  deep,  are  to  be 
seen  in  that  rock  to-day. 

This  rock,  large  as  it  is,  is  suspended  in  the  air. 
It  does  not  touch  anything  at  all.  The  guide  said 
so.  This  is  very  wonderful.  In  the  place  on  it 
where  Mohammed  stood,  he  left  his  footprints  in  the 
solid  stone.  I  should  judge  that  he  wore  about 
eighteens.  But  what  I  was  going  to  say,  when  I 
spoke  of  the  rock  being  suspended,  was,  that  in  the 
floor  of  the  cavern  under  it  they  showed  us  a  slab 
which  they  said  covered  a  hole  which  was  a  thing  of 
extraordinary  interest  to  all  Mohammedans,  because 
that  hole  leads  down  to  perdition,  and  every  soul  that 
is  transferred  from  thence  to  Heaven  must  pass  up 
through  this  orifice.  Mohammed  stands  there  and 
lifts  them  out  by  the  hair.    All  Mohammedans  shave 

323 


MARK    TWAIN 

their  heads,  but  they  are  careful  to  leave  a  lock  of 
hair  for  the  Prophet  to  take  hold  of.  Our  guide 
observed  that  a  good  Mohammedan  would  consider 
himself  doomed  to  stay  with  the  damned  forever  if 
he  were  to  lose  his  scalp-lock  and  die  before  it  grew 
again.  The  most  of  them  that  I  have  seen  ought  to 
stay  with  the  damned,  anyhow,  without  reference  to 
how  they  were  barbered. 

For  several  ages  no  woman  has  been  allowed  to 
enter  the  cavern  where  that  important  hole  is.  The 
reason  is  that  one  of  the  sex  was  once  caught  there 
blabbing  everything  she  knew  about  what  was  going 
on  above-ground,  to  the  rapscallions  in  the  infernal 
regions  down  below.  She  carried  her  gossiping  to 
such  an  extreme  that  nothing  could  be  kept  private 
— nothing  could  be  done  or  said  on  earth  but  every- 
body in  perdition  knew  all  about  it  before  the  sun 
went  down.  It  was  about  time  to  suppress  this 
woman's  telegraph,  and  it  was  promptly  done.  Her 
breath  subsided  about  the  same  time. 

The  inside  of  the  great  mosque  is  very  showy  with 
variegated  marble  walls  and  with  windows  and  in- 
scriptions of  elaborate  mosaic.  The  Turks  have  their 
sacred  relics,  like  the  Catholics.  The  guide  showed 
us  the  veritable  armor  worn  by  the  great  son-in-la^ 
and  successor  of  Mohammed,  and  also  the  buckler  of 
Mohammed's  uncle.  The  great  iron  railing  which 
surrounds  the  rock  was  ornamented  in  one  place  with 
a  thousand  rags  tied  to  its  open  work.  These  are  to 
remind  Mohammed  not  to  forget  the  worshipers  who 
placed  them  there.  It  is  considered  the  next  best  thing 
to  tying  threads  around  his  finger  byway  of  reminders. 

324 


THE    INNOCENTS   ABROAD 

Just  outside  the  mosque  is  a  miniature  temple, 
which  marks  the  spot  where  David  and  Goliah  used 
to  sit  and  judge  the  people.1 

Everywhere  about  the  Mosque  of  Omar  are  por- 
tions of  pillars,  curiously  wrought  altars,  and  frag- 
ments of  elegantly  carved  marble — precious  remains 
of  Solomon's  Temple.  These  have  been  dug  from 
all  depths  in  the  soil  and  rubbish  of  Mount  Moriah, 
and  the  Moslems  have  always  shown  a  disposition  to 
preserve  them  with  the  utmost  care.  At  that  por- 
tion of  the  ancient  wall  of  Solomon's  Temple  which 
is  called  the  Jew's  Place  of  Wailing,  and  where  the 
Hebrews  assemble  every  Friday  to  kiss  the  venerated 
stones  and  weep  over  the  fallen  greatness  of  Zion, 
any  one  can  see  a  part  of  the  unquestioned  and  un- 
disputed Temple  of  Solomon,  the  same  consisting  of 
three  or  four  stones  lying  one  upon  the  other,  each 
of  which  is  about  twice  as  long  as  a  seven-octave 
piano,  and  about  as  thick  as  such  a  piano  is  high. 
But  as  I  have  remarked  before,  it  is  only  a  year  or 
two  ago  that  the  ancient  edict  prohibiting  Christian 
rubbish  like  ourselves  to  enter  the  Mosque  of  Omar 
and  see  the  costly  marbles  that  once  adorned  the 
inner  Temple  was  annulled.  The  designs  wrought 
upon  these  fragments  are  all  quaint  and  peculiar,  and 
so  the  charm  of  novelty  is  added  to  the  deep  interest 
they  naturally  inspire.  One  meets  with  these  vener- 
able scraps  at  every  turn,  especially  in  the  neighbor- 
ing Mosque  el  Aksa,  into  whose  inner  walls  a  very 

1 A  pilgrim  informs  me  that  it  was  not  David  and  Goliah,  but 
David  and  Saul.  I  stick  to  my  own  statement — the  guide  told  me, 
and  he  ought  to  know. 

325 


MARK    TWAIN 

large  number  of  them  are  carefully  built  for  preser- 
vation. These  pieces  of  stone,  stained  and  dusty 
with  age,  dimly  hint  at  a  grandeur  we  have  all  been 
taught  to  regard  as  the  princeliest  ever  seen  on  earth ; 
and  they  call  up  pictures  of  a  pageant  that  is  familiar 
to  all  imaginations — camels  laden  with  spices  and 
treasure — beautiful  slaves,  presents  for  Solomon's 
harem — a  long  cavalcade  of  richly  caparisoned 
beasts  and  warriors — and  Sheba's  Queen  in  the  van 
of  this  vision  of  "Oriental  magnificence."  These 
elegant  fragments  bear  a  richer  interest  than  the 
solemn  vastness  of  the  stones  the  Jews  kiss  in  the 
Place  of  Wailing  can  ever  have  for  the  heedless 
sinner. 

Down  in  the  hollow  ground,  underneath  the  olives 
and  the  orange  trees  that  flourish  in  the  court  of  the 
great  Mosque,  is  a  wilderness  of  pillars — remains  of 
the  ancient  Temple;  they  supported  it.  There  are 
ponderous  archways  down  there,  also,  over  which 
the  destroying  "plow"  of  prophecy  passed  harm- 
less. It  is  pleasant  to  know  we  are  disappointed,  in 
that  we  never  dreamed  we  might  see  portions  of  the 
actual  Temple  of  Solomon,  and  yet  experience  no 
shadow  of  suspicion  that  they  were  a  monkish  hum- 
bug and  a  fraud. 

We  are  surfeited  with  sights.  Nothing  has  any 
fascination  for  us,  now,  but  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulcher.  We  have  been  there  every  day,  and 
have  not  grown  tired  of  it;  but  we  are  weary  of 
everything  else.  The  sights  are  too  many.  They 
swarm  about  you  ?'c  every  step;  no  single  foot  of 
ground  in  all  Jerusalem  or  within  its  neighborhood 

326 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

seems  to  be  without  a  stirring  and  important  history 
of  its  own.  It  is  a  very  relief  to  steal  a  walk  of  a 
hundred  yards  without  a  guide  along  to  talk  unceas- 
ingly about  every  stone  you  step  upon  and  drag  you 
back  ages  and  ages  to  the  day  when  it  achieved 
celebrity. 

It  seems  hardly  real  when  I  find  myself  leaning 
for  a  moment  on  a  ruined  wall  and  looking  listlessly 
down  into  the  historic  pool  of  Bethesda.  I  did  not 
think  such  things  could  be  so  crowded  together  as  to 
diminish  their  interest.  But,  in  serious  truth,  we 
have  been  drifting  about,  for  several  days,  using  our 
eyes  and  our  ears  more  from  a  sense  of  duty  than  any 
higher  and  worthier  reason.  And  too  often  we  have 
been  glad  when  it  was  time  to  go  home  and  be  dis- 
tressed no  more  about  illustrious  localities. 

Our  pilgrims  compress  too  much  into  one  day. 
One  can  gorge  sights  to  repletion  as  well  as  sweet- 
meats. Since  we  breakfasted,  this  morning,  we  have 
seen  enough  to  have  furnished  us  food  for  a  year's 
reflection  if  we  could  have  seen  the  various  objects 
in  comfort  and  looked  upon  them  deliberately.  We 
visited  the  Pool  of  Hezekiah,  where  David  saw 
Uriah's  wife  coming  from  the  bath  and  fell  in  love 
with  her. 

We  went  out  of  the  city  by  the  Jaffa  gate,  and  of 
course  were  told  many  things  about  its  Tower  of 
Hippicus. 

We  rode  across  the  Valley  of  Hinnom,  between 
two  of  the  Pools  of  Gihon,  and  by  an  aqueduct 
built  by  Solomon,  which  still  conveys  water  to  the 
city.     We  ascended  the  Hill  of  Evil  Counsel,  where 

327 


MARK    TWAIN 

Judas  received  his  thirty  pieces  of  silver,  and  we  also 
lingered  a  moment  under  the  tree  a  venerable  tradi- 
tion says  he  hanged  himself  on. 

We  descended  to  the  canon  again,  and  then  the 
guide  began  to  give  name  and  history  to  every  bank 
and  boulder  we  came  to:  "This  was  the  Field  of 
Blood;  these  cuttings  in  the  rocks  were  shrines  and 
temples  of  Moloch;  here  they  sacrificed  children; 
yonder  is  the  Zion  Gate;  the  Tyropean  Valley;  the 
Hill  of  Ophel;  here  is  the  junction  of  the  Valley  of 
Jehoshaphat — on  your  right  is  the  Well  of  Job." 
We  turned  up  Jehoshaphat.     The  recital  went  on. 

"This  is  the  Mount  of  Olives;  this  is  the  Hill  of 
Offense;  the  nest  of  huts  is  the  Village  of  Siloam; 
here,  yonder,  everywhere,  is  the  King's  Garden; 
under  this  great  tree  Zacharias,  the  high  priest,  was 
murdered;  yonder  is  Mount  Moriah  and  the  Temple 
wall;  the  tomb  of  Absalom;  the  tomb  of  St.  James; 
the  tomb  of  Zacharias;  beyond,  are  the  Garden  of 
Gethsemane  and  the  tomb  of  the  Virgin  Mary ;  here 
is  the  Pool  of  Siloam,  and — " 

We  said  we  would  dismount,  and  quench  our 
thirst,  and  rest.  We  were  burning  up  with  the  heat. 
We  were  failing  under  the  accumulated  fatigue  of 
days  and  days  of  ceaseless  marching.  All  were 
willing. 

The  Pool  is  a  deep,  walled  ditch,  through  which  a 
clear  stream  of  water  runs,  that  comes  from  under 
Jerusalem  somewhere,  and  passing  through  the 
Fountain  of  the  Virgin,  or  being  supplied  from  it, 
reaches  this  place  by  way  of  a  tunnel  of  heavy 
masonry.     The  famous  pool  looked  exactly  as  it 

328 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

looked  in  Solomon's  time,  no  doubt,  and  the  same 
dusky,  Oriental  women  came  down  in  their  old 
Oriental  way  and  carried  off  jars  of  the  water  on 
their  heads,  just  as  they  did  three  thousand  years 
ago,  and  just  as  they  will  do  fifty  thousand  years 
hence  if  any  of  them  are  still  left  on  earth. 

We  went  away  from  there  and  stopped  at  the 
Fountain  of  the  Virgin.  But  the  water  was  not 
good,  and  there  was  no  comfort  or  peace  anywhere, 
on  account  of  the  regiment  of  boys  and  girls  and  beg- 
gars that  persecuted  us  all  the  time  for  bucksheesh. 
The  guide  wanted  us  to  give  them  some  money,  and 
we  did  it;  but  when  he  went  on  to  say  that  they 
were  starving  to  death  we  could  not  but  feel  that  we 
had  done  a  great  sin  in  throwing  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  such  a  desirable  consummation,  and  so  we  tried 
to  collect  it  back,  but  it  could  not  be  done. 

We  entered  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  and  we 
visited  the  Tomb  of  the  Virgin,  both  of  which  we 
had  seen  before.  It  is  not  meet  that  I  should  speak 
of  them  now.     A  more  fitting  time  will  come. 

I  cannot  speak  now  of  the  Mount  of  Olives  or  its 
view  of  Jerusalem,  the  Dead  Sea,  and  the  mountains 
of  Moab ;  nor  of  the  Damascus  Gate  or  the  tree  that 
was  planted  by  King  Godfrey  of  Jerusalem.  One 
ought  to  feel  pleasantly  when  he  talks  of  these  things. 
I  cannot  say  anything  about  the  stone  column  that 
projects  over  Jehoshaphat  from  the  Temple  wall 
like  a  cannon,  except  that  the  Moslems  believe  Mo- 
hammed will  sit  astride  of  it  when  he  comes  to  judge 
the  world.  It  is  a  pity  he  could  not  judge  it  from 
some  roost  of  his  own  in  Mecca,  without  trespass- 

320 


MARK    TWAIN 

ing  on  our  holy  ground.  Close  by  is  the  Golden 
Gate,  in  the  Temple  wall — a  gate  that  was  an 
elegant  piece  of  sculpture  in  the  time  of  the  Temple, 
and  is  even  so  yet.  From  it,  in  ancient  times,  the 
Jewish  High  Priest  turned  loose  the  scapegoat  and 
let  him  flee  to  the  wilderness  and  bear  away  his 
twelvemonth  load  of  the  sins  of  the  people.  If 
they  were  to  turn  one  loose  now,  he  would  not  get 
as  far  as  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  till  these  miser- 
able vagabonds  here  would  gobble  him  up,1  sins  and 
all.  They  wouldn't  care.  Mutton-chops  and  sin  is 
good  enough  living  for  them.  The  Moslems  watch 
the  Golden  Gate  with  a  jealous  eye,  and  an  anxious 
one,  for  they  have  an  honored  tradition  that  when 
it  falls,  Islamism  will  fall,  and  with  it  the  Ottoman 
Empire.  It  did  not  grieve  me  any  to  notice  that  the 
old  gate  was  getting  a  little  shaky. 

We  are  at  home  again.     We  are  exhausted.     The 
sun  has  roasted  us,  almost. 

We  have  full  comfort  in  one  reflection,  however. 
Our  experiences  in  Europe  have  taught  us  that  in 
time  this  fatigue  will  be  forgotten;  the  heat  will  be 
forgotten;  the  thirst,  the  tiresome  volubility  of  the 
guide,  the  persecutions  of  the  beggars — and  then, 
all  that  will  be  left  will  be  pleasant  memories  of 
Jerusalem,  memories  we  shall  call  up  with  always  in- 
creasing interest  as  the  years  go  by,  memories  which 
some  day  will  become  all  beautiful  when  the  last 
annoyance  that  encumbers  them  shall  have  faded  out 
of  our  minds  never  again  to  return.  School-boy  days 
are  no  happier  than  the  days  of  after  life,  but  we  look 
1  Favorite  pilgrim  expression. 
330 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

back  upon  them  regretfully  because  we  have  for- 
gotten our  punishments  at  school,  and  how  we 
grieved  when  our  marbles  were  lost  and  our  kites 
destroyed — because  we  have  forgotten  all  the  sorrows 
and  privations  of  that  canonized  epoch  and  remem- 
ber only  its  orchard  robberies,  its  wooden -sword 
pageants,  and  its  fishing  holidays.  We  are  satisfied. 
We  can  wait.  Our  reward  will  come.  To  us,  Jerusa- 
lem and  to-day's  experiences  will  be  an  enchanted 
memory  a  year  hence — a  memory  which  money 
could  not  buy  from  us. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

WE  cast  up  the  account.  It  footed  up  pretty 
fairly.  There  was  nothing  more  at  Jerusa- 
lem to  be  seen,  except  the  traditional  houses  of  Dives 
and  Lazarus  of  the  parable,  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings, 
and  those  of  the  Judges ;  the  spot  where  they  stoned 
one  of  the  disciples  to  death,  and  beheaded  another; 
the  room  and  the  table  made  celebrated  by  the  Last 
Supper;  the  fig  tree  that  Jesus  withered;  a  number 
of  historical  places  about  Gethsemane  and  the  Mount 
of  Olives,  and  fifteen  or  twenty  others  in  different 
portions  of  the  city  itself. 

We  were  approaching  the  end.  Human  nature 
asserted  itself,  now.  Overwork  and  consequent  ex- 
haustion began  to  have  their  natural  effect.  They 
began  to  master  the  energies  and  dull  the  ardor  of 
the  party.  Perfectly  secure  now  against  failing  to 
accomplish  any  detail  of  the  pilgrimage,  they  felt 
like  drawing  in  advance  upon  the  holiday  soon  to 
be  placed  to  their  credit.  They  grew  a  little  lazy. 
They  were  late  to  breakfast  and  sat  long  at  dinner. 
Thirty  or  forty  pilgrims  had  arrived  from  the  ship, 
by  the  short  routes,  and  much  swapping  of  gossip 
had  to  be  indulged  in.  And  in  hot  afternoons,  they 
showed  a  strong  disposition  to  lie  on  the  cool  divans 
in  the  hotel  and  smoke  and   talk  about  pleasant 

332 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

experiences  of  a  month  or  so  gone  by — for  even  thus 
early  do  episodes  of  travel  which  were  sometimes 
annoying,  sometimes  exasperating,  and  full  as  often 
of  no  consequence  at  all  when  they  transpired,  begin 
to  rise  above  the  dead  level  of  monotonous  remin- 
iscences and  become  shapely  landmarks  in  one's 
memory.  The  fog-whistle,  smothered  among  a 
million  of  trifling  sounds,  is  not  noticed  a  block 
away,  in  the  city,  but  the  sailor  hears  it  far  at  sea, 
whither  none  of  those  thousands  of  trifling  sounds 
can  reach.  When  one  is  in  Rome,  all  the  domes  are 
alike ;  but  when  he  has  gone  away  twelve  miles,  the 
city  fades  utterly  from  sight  and  leaves  St.  Peter's 
swelling  above  the  level  plain  like  an  anchored  bal- 
loon. When  one  is  traveling  in  Europe,  the  daily 
incidents  seem  all  alike ;  but  when  he  has  placed  them 
all  two  months  and  two  thousand  miles  behind  him, 
those  that  were  worthy  of  being  remembered  are 
prominent,  and  those  that  were  really  insignificant 
have  vanished.  This  disposition  to  smoke  and  idle 
and  talk  was  not  well.  It  was  plain  that  it  must 
not  be  allowed  to  gain  ground.  A  diversion  must  be 
tried,  or  demoralization  would  ensue.  The  Jordan, 
Jericho,  and  the  Dead  Sea  were  suggested.  The 
remainder  of  Jerusalem  must  be  left  un visited,  for 
a  little  while.  The  journey  was  approved  at  once. 
New  life  stirred  in  every  pulse.  In  the  saddle — 
abroad  on  the  plains — sleeping  in  beds  bounded 
only  by  the  horizon:  fancy  was  at  work  with  these 
things  in  a  moment.  It  was  painful  to  note  how 
readily  these  town-bred  men  had  taken  to  the  free 
life  of  the   camp   and   the   desert.     The  nomadic 

333 


MARK    TWAIN 

instinct  is  a  human  instinct ;  it  was  born  with  Adam 
and  transmitted  through  the  patriarchs,  and  after 
thirty  centuries  of  steady  effort,  civilization  has  not 
educated  it  entirely  out  of  us  yet.  It  has  a  charm 
which,  once  tasted,  a  man  will  yearn  to  taste  again. 
The  nomadic  instinct  cannot  be  educated  out  of  an 
Indian  at  all. 

The  Jordan  journey  being  approved,  our  dragoman 
was  notified. 

At  nine  in  the  morning  the  caravan  was  before  the 
hotel  door  and  we  were  at  breakfast.  There  was 
a  commotion  about  the  place.  Rumors  of  war  and 
bloodshed  were  flying  everywhere.  The  lawless 
Bedouins  in  the  Valley  of  the  Jordan  and  the  deserts 
down  by  the  Dead  Sea  were  up  in  arms,  and  were 
going  to  destroy  all  comers.  They  had  had  a  battle 
with  a  troop  of  Turkish  cavalry  and  defeated  them; 
several  men  killed.  They  had  shut  up  the  inhab- 
itants of  a  village  and  a  Turkish  garrison  in  an  old 
fort  near  Jericho,  and  were  besieging  them.  They 
had  marched  upon  a  camp  of  our  excursionists  by 
the  Jordan,  and  the  pilgrims  only  saved  their  lives  by 
stealing  away  and  flying  to  Jerusalem  under  whip 
and  spur  in  the  darkness  of  the  night.  Another  of 
our  parties  had  been  fired  on  from  an  ambush  and 
then  attacked  in  the  open  day.  Shots  were  fired  on 
both  sides.  Fortunately,  there  was  no  bloodshed. 
We  spoke  with  the  very  pilgrim  who  had  fired  one  of 
the  shots,  and  learned  from  his  own  lips  how,  in  this 
imminent  deadly  peril,  only  the  cool  courage  of  the 
pilgrims,  their  strength  of  numbers  and  imposing 
display  of  war  material,  had  saved  them  from  utter 

334 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

destruction.  It  was  reported  that  the  Consul  had 
requested  that  no  more  of  our  pilgrims  should  go  to 
the  Jordan  while  this  state  of  things  lasted;  and 
further,  that  he  was  unwilling  that  any  more  should 
go,  at  least  without  an  unusually  strong  military 
guard.  Here  was  trouble.  But  with  the  horses  at 
the  door  and  everybody  aware  of  what  they  were 
there  for,  what  would  you  have  done?  Acknowl- 
edged that  you  were  afraid,  and  backed  shamefully 
out?  Hardly.  It  would  not  be  human  nature, 
where  there  were  so  many  women.  You  would 
have  done  as  we  did:  said  you  were  not  afraid  of 
a  million  Bedouins — and  made  your  will  and  pro- 
posed quietly  to  yourself  to  take  up  an  unostenta- 
tious position  in  the  rear  of  the  procession. 

I  think  we  must  all  have  determined  upon  the 
same  line  of  tactics,  for  it  did  seem  as  if  we  never 
would  get  to  Jericho.  I  had  a  notoriously  slow 
horse,  but  somehow  I  could  not  keep  him  in  the  rear, 
to  save  my  neck.  He  was  forever  turning  up  in  the 
lead.  In  such  cases  I  trembled  a  little,  and  got  down 
to  fix  my  saddle.  But  it  was  not  of  any  use.  The 
others  all  got  down  to  fix  their  saddles,  too.  I  never 
saw  such  a  time  with  saddles.  It  was  the  first  time 
any  of  them  had  got  out  of  order  in  three  weeks, 
and  now  they  had  all  broken  down  at  once.  I  tried 
walking,  for  exercise — I  had  not  had  enough  in 
Jerusalem  searching  for  holy  places.  But  it  was  a 
failure.  The  whole  mob  were  suffering  for  exercise, 
and  it  was  not  fifteen  minutes  till  they  were  all  on 
foot  and  I  had  the  lead  again.  It  was.  very  dis- 
couraging. 

i35 


MARK    TWAIN 

This  was  all  after  we  got  beyond  Bethany.  We 
stopped  at  the  village  of  Bethany,  an  hour  out  from 
Jerusalem.  They  showed  us  the  tomb  of  Lazarus. 
I  had  rather  live  in  it  than  in  any  house  in  the  town. 
And  they  showed  us  also  a  large  "  Fountain  of 
Lazarus,"  and  in  the  center  of  the  village  the  ancient 
dwelling  of  Lazarus.  Lazarus  appears  to  have  been 
a  man  of  property.  The  legends  of  the  Sunday- 
schools  do  him  great  injustice;  they  give  one  the 
impression  that  he  was  poor.  It  is  because  they  get 
him  confused  with  that  Lazarus  who  had  no  merit 
but  his  virtue,  and  virtue  never  has  been  as  respect- 
able as  money.  The  house  of  Lazarus  is  a  three- 
story  edifice,  of  stone  masonry,  but  the  accumulated 
rubbish  of  ages  has  buried  all  of  it  but  the  upper 
story.  We  took  candles  and  descended  to  the 
dismal  cell-like  chambers  where  Jesus  sat  at  meat 
with  Martha  and  Mary,  and  conversed  with  them 
about  their  brother.  We  could  not  but  look  upon 
these  old  dingy  apartments  with  a  more  than  com- 
mon interest. 

We  had  had  a  glimpse,  from  a  mountain-top,  of 
the  Dead  Sea,  lying  like  a  blue  shield  in  the  plain  of 
the  Jordan,  and  now  we  were  marching  down  a  close, 
flaming,  rugged,  desolate  defile,  where  no  living 
creature  could  enjoy  life,  except,  perhaps,  a  sal- 
amander. It  was  such  a  dreary,  repulsive,  horrible 
solitude!  It  was  the  "wilderness"  where  John 
preached,  with  camel's  hair  about  his  loins — rai- 
ment enough — but  he  never  could  have  got  his 
locusts  and  wild  honey  here.  We  were  moping 
along  down  through  this  dreadful  place,  every  man 

336 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

m  the  rear.  Our  guards — two  gorgeous  young 
Arab  sheiks,  with  cargoes  of  swords,  guns,  pistols, 
and  daggers  on  board — were  loafing  ahead. 

"  Bedouins!" 

Every  man  shrunk  up  and  disappeared  in  his 
clothes  like  a  mud-turtle.  My  first  impulse  was  to 
dash  forward  and  destroy  the  Bedouins.  My  second 
was  to  dash  to  the  rear  to  see  if  there  were  any  com- 
ing in  that  direction.  I  acted  on  the  latter  impulse. 
So  did  all  the  others.  If  any  Bedouins  had  ap- 
proached us,  then,  from  that  point  of  the  compass, 
they  would  have  paid  dearly  for  their  rashness.  We 
all  remarked  that  afterward.  There  would  have 
been  scenes  of  riot  and  bloodshed  there  that  no  pen 
could  describe.  I'know  that,  because  each  man  told 
what  he  would  have  done,  individually;  and  such  a 
medley  of  strange  and  unheard-of  inventions  of 
cruelty  you  could  not  conceive  of.  One  man  said 
he  had  calmly  made  up  his  mind  to  perish  where  he 
stood,  if  need  be,  but  never  yield  an  inch;  he  was 
going  to  wait,  with  deadly  patience,  till  he  could 
count  the  stripes  upon  the  first  Bedouin's  jacket,  and 
then  count  them  and  let  him  have  it.  Another  was 
going  to  sit  still  till  the  first  lance  reached  within  an 
inch  of  his  breast,  and  then  dodge  it  and  seize  it.  I 
forbear  to  tell  what  he  was  going  to  do  to  that 
Bedouin  that  owned  it.  It  makes  my  blood  run 
cold  to  think  of  it.  Another  was  going  to  scalp  such 
Bedouins  as  fell  to  his  share,  and  take  his  bald- 
headed  sons  of  the  desert  home  with  him  alive  for 
trophies.  But  the  wild-eyed  pilgrim  rhapsodist  was 
silent.     His  orbs  gleamed  with  a  deadly  light,  but 

337 


MARK    TWAIN 

his  lips  moved  not.  Anxiety  grew,  and  he  was 
questioned.  If  he  had  got  a  Bedouin,  what  would 
he  have  done  with  him — shot  him?  He  smiled  a 
smile  of  grim  contempt  and  shook  his  head.  Would 
he  have  stabbed  him?  Another  shake.  Would  he 
have  quartered  him — flayed  him?  More  shakes. 
Oh!   horror,  what  would  he  have  done? 

"Eat  him!" 

Such  was  the  awful  sentence  that  thundered  from 
his  lips.  What  was  grammar  to  a  desperado  like 
that  ?  I  was  glad  in  my  heart  that  I  had  been  spared 
these  scenes  of  malignant  carnage.  No  Bedouins 
attacked  our  terrible  rear.  And  none  attacked  the 
front.  The  new-comers  were  only  a  reinforcement 
of  cadaverous  Arabs,  in  shirts  and  bare  legs,  sent 
far  ahead  of  us  to  brandish  rusty  guns,  and  shout 
and  brag,  and  carry  on  like  lunatics,  and  thus  scare 
away  all  bands  of  marauding  Bedouins  that  might 
lurk  about  our  path.  What  a  shame  it  is  that  armed 
white  Christians  must  travel  under  guard  of  vermin 
like  this  as  a  protection  against  the  prowling  vaga- 
bonds of  the  desert — those  sanguinary  outlaws  who 
are  always  going  to  do  something  desperate,  but 
never  do  it.  I  may  as  well  mention  here  that  on  our 
whole  trip  we  saw  no  Bedouins,  and  had  no  more 
use  for  an  Arab  guard  than  we  could  have  had  for 
patent-leather  boots  and  white  kid  gloves.  The 
Bedouins  that  attacked  the  other  parties  of  pilgrims 
so  fiercely  were  provided  for  the  occasion  by  the 
Arab  guides  of  those  parties,  and  shipped  from 
Jerusalem  for  temporary  service  as  Bedouins.  They 
met  together  in  full  view  of  the  pilgrims,  after  the 

338 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

battle,  and  took  lunch,  divided  the  bucksheesh  ex- 
torted in  the  season  of  danger,  and  then  accompanied 
the  cavalcade  home  to  the  city !  The  nuisance  of  an 
Arab  guard  is  one  which  is  created  by  the  Sheika 
and  the  Bedouins  together,  for  mutual  profit,  it  ia 
said,  and  no  doubt  there  is  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  it. 

We  visited  the  fountain  the  prophet  Elisha  sweet- 
ened (it  is  sweet  yet) ;  where  he  remained  some  time 
and  was  fed  by  the  ravens. 

Ancient  Jericho  is  not  very  picturesque  as  a  ruin. 
When  Joshua  marched  around  it  seven  times,  some 
three  thousand  years  ago,  and  blew  it  down  with  his 
trumpet,  he  did  the  work  so  well  and  so  completely 
that  he  hardly  left  enough  of  the  city  to  cast  a 
shadow.  The  curse  pronounced  against  the  rebuild- 
ing of  it  has  never  been  removed.  One  king,  hold- 
ing the  curse  in  light  estimation,  made  the  attempt, 
but  was  stricken  sorely  for  his  presumption.  Its 
site  will  always  remain  unoccupied;  and  yet  it  is 
one  of  the  very  best  locations  for  a  town  we  have 
seen  in  all  Palestine. 

At  two  in  the  morning  they  routed  us  out  of  bed 
— another  piece  of  unwarranted  cruelty,  another 
stupid  effort  of  our  dragoman  to  get  ahead  of  a 
rival.  It  was  not  two  hours  to  the  Jordan.  How- 
ever, we  were  dressed  and  under  way  before  any  one 
thought  of  looking  to  see  what  time  it  was,  and  so 
we  drowsed  on  through  the  chill  night  air  and 
dreamed  of  camp-fires,  warm  beds,  and  other  com- 
fortable things. 

There  was  no  conversation.  People  do  not  talk 
when  they  are  cold,  and  wretched,  and  sleepy.     We 

339 


MARK    TWAIN 

nodded  in  the  saddle,  at  times,  and  woke  up  with  a 
start  to  find  that  the  procession  had  disappeared  in 
the  gloom.  Then  there  was  energy  and  attention  to 
business  until  its  dusky  outlines  came  in  sight  again. 
Occasionally  the  order  was  passed  in  a  low  voice 
down  the  line:  "Close  up — close  up!  Bedouins 
lurk  here,  everywhere!"  What  an  exquisite  shud- 
der it  sent  shivering  along  one's  spine! 

We  reached  the  famous  river  before  four  o'clock, 
and  the  night  was  so  black  that  we  could  have  ridden 
into  it  without  seeing  it.  Some  of  us  were  in  an 
unhappy  frame  of  mind.  We  waited  and  waited  for 
daylight,  but  it  did  not  come.  Finally  we  went 
away  in  the  dark  and  slept  an  hour  on  the  ground, 
in  the  bushes,  and  caught  cold.  It  was  a  costly 
nap,  on  that  account,  but  otherwise  it  was  a  paying 
investment  because  it  brought  unconsciousness  of 
the  dreary  minutes  and  put  us  in  a  somewhat  fitter 
mood  for  a  first  glimpse  of  the  sacred  river. 

With  the  first  suspicion  of  dawn,  every  pilgrim  took 
off  his  clothes  and  waded  into  the  dark  torrent,  sing- 
ing: 

On  Jordan's  stormy  banks  I  stand, 

And  cast  a  wistful  eye 
To  Canaan's  fair  and  happy  land, 
Where  my  possessions  lie. 

But  they  did  not  sing  long.  The  water  was  so 
fearfully  cold  that  they  were  obliged  to  stop  singing 
and  scamper  out  again.  Then  they  stood  on  the 
bank  shivering,  and  so  chagrined  and  so  grieved, 
that  they  merited  honest  compassion.  Because 
another  dream,  another  cherished  hope,  had  failed. 

34<i 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

They  had  promised  themselves  all  along  that  they 
would  cross  the  Jordan  where  the  Israelites  crossed 
it  when  they  entered  Canaan  from  their  long  pil- 
grimage in  the  desert.  They  would  cross  where  the 
twelve  stones  were  placed  in  memory  of  that  great 
event.  While  they  did  it  they  would  picture  to 
themselves  that  vast  army  of  pilgrims  marching 
through  the  cloven  waters,  bearing  the  hallowed  ark 
of  the  covenant  and  shouting  hosannahs,  and  singing 
songs  of  thanksgiving  and  praise.  Each  had  prom- 
ised himself  that  he  would  be  the  first  to  cross. 
They  were  at  the  goal  of  their  hopes  at  last,  but  the 
current  was  too  swift,  the  water  was  too  cold! 

It  was  then  that  Jack  did  them  a  service.  With 
that  engaging  recklessness  of  consequences  which  is 
natural  to  youth,  and  so  proper  and  so  seemly,  as 
well,  he  went  and  led  the  way  across  the  Jordan,  and 
all  was  happiness  again.  Every  individual  waded 
over,  then,  and  stood  upon  the  further  bank.  The 
water  was  not  quite  breast-deep,  anywhere.  If  it 
had  been  more,  we  could  hardly  have  accomplished 
the  feat,  for  the  strong  current  would  have  swept  us 
down  the  stream,  and  we  would  have  been  exhausted 
and  drowned  before  reaching  a  place  where  we  could 
make  a  landing.  The  main  object  compassed,  the 
drooping,  miserable  party  sat  down  to  wait  for  the 
sun  again,  for  all  wanted  to  see  the  water  as  well  as 
feel  it.  But  it  was  too  cold  a  pastime.  Some  cans 
were  filled  from  the  holy  river,  some  canes  cut  from 
its  banks,  and  then  we  mounted  and  rode  reluctantly 
away  to  keep  from  freezing  to  death.  So  we  saw 
the  Jordan  very  dimly.     The  thickets  of  bushes  that 

341 


MARK    TWAIN 

bordered  its  banks  threw  their  shadows  across  its 
shallow,  turbulent  waters  ("stormy,"  the  hymn 
makes  them,  which  is  rather  a  complimentary  stretch 
of  fancy),  and  we  could  not  judge  of  the  width  of 
the  stream  by  the  eye.  We  knew  by  our  wading 
experience,  however,  that  many  streets  in  America 
are  double  as  wide  as  the  Jordan. 

Daylight  came,  soon  after  we  got  under  way,  and 
in  the  course  of  an  hour  or  two  we  reached  the 
Dead  Sea.  Nothing  grows  in  the  flat,  burning  desert 
around  it  but  weeds  and  the  Dead  Sea  apple  the 
poets  say  is  beautiful  to  the  eye,  but  crumbles  to 
ashes  and  dust  when  you  break  it.  Such  as  we 
found  were  not  handsome,  but  they  were  bitter  to 
the  taste.  They  yielded  no  dust.  It  was  because 
they  were  not  ripe,  perhaps. 

The  desert  and  the  barren  hills  gleam  painfully  in 
the  sun,  around  the  Dead  Sea,  and  there  is  no 
pleasant  thing  or  living  creature  upon  it  or  about  its 
borders  to  cheer  the  eye.  It  is  a  scorching,  arid, 
repulsive  solitude.  A  silence  broods  over  the  scene 
that  is  depressing  to  the  spirits.  It  makes  one  think 
of  funerals  and  death. 

The  Dead  Sea  is  small.  Its  waters  are  very  clear, 
and  it  has  a  pebbly  bottom  and  is  shallow  for  some 
distance  out  from  the  shores.  It  yields  quantities 
of  asphaltum;  fragments  of  it  lie  all  about  its  banks; 
this  stuff  gives  the  place  something  of  an  unpleasant 
smell. 

All  our  reading  had  taught  us  to  expect  that  the 
first  plunge  into  the  Dead  Sea  would  be  attended 
with  distressing  results — our  bodies  would  feel  as  if 

342 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

they  were  suddenly  pierced  by  millions  of  red-hot 
needles;  the  dreadful  smarting  would  continue  for 
hours ;  we  might  even  look  to  be  blistered  from  head 
to  foot,  and  suffer  miserably  for  many  days.  We 
were  disappointed.  Our  eight  sprang  in  at  the  same 
time  that  another  party  of  pilgrims  did,  and  nobody 
screamed  once.  None  of  them  ever  did  complain 
of  anything  more  than  a  slight  pricking  sensation  in 
places  where  their  skin  was  abraded,  and  then  only 
for  a  short  time.  My  face  smarted  for  a  couple  of 
hours,  but  it  was  partly  because  I  got  it  badly  sun- 
burned while  I  was  bathing,  and  stayed  in  so  long 
that  it  became  plastered  over  with  salt. 

No,  the  water  did  not  blister  us;  it  did  not  cover 
us  with  a  slimy  ooze  and  confer  upon  us  an  atrocious 
fragrance;  it  was  not  very  slimy;  and  I  could  not 
discover  that  we  smelt  really  any  worse  than  we 
have  always  smelt  since  we  have  been  in  Palestine. 
It  was  only  a  different  kind  of  smell,  but  not  con- 
spicuous on  that  account,  because  we  have  a  great 
deal  of  variety  in  that  respect.  We  didn't  smell, 
there  on  the  Jordan,  the  same  as  we  do  in  Jerusa- 
lem; and  we  don't  smell  in  Jerusalem  just  as  we  did 
in  Nazareth,  or  Tiberias,  or  Cesarea  Philippi,  or  any 
of  those  other  ruinous  ancient  towns  in  Galilee. 
No,  we  change  all  the  time,  and  generally  for  the 
worse.     We  do  our  own  washing. 

It  was  a  funny  bath.  We  could  not  sink.  One 
could  stretch  himself  at  full  length  on  his  back,  with 
his  arms  on  his  breast,  and  all  of  his  body  above  a 
line  drawn  from  the  corner  of  his  jaw  past  the  middle 
of  his  side,  the  middle  of  his  leg  and  through  his 

343 


MARK    TWAIN 

ankle-bone,  would  remain  out  of  water.  He  could 
lift  his  head  clear  out  if  he  chose.  No  position 
can  be  retained  long;  you  lose  your  balance  and 
whirl  over,  first  on  your  back  and  then  on  your 
face,  and  so  on.  You  can  lie  comfortably,  on  your 
back,  with  your  head  out,  and  your  legs  out  from 
your  knees  down,  by  steadying  yourself  with  your 
hands.  You  can  sit,  with  your  knees  drawn  up  to 
your  chin  and  your  arms  clasped  around  them,  but 
you  are  bound  to  turn  over  presently,  because  you 
are  top-heavy  in  that  position.  You  can  stand  up 
straight  in  water  that  is  over  your  head,  and  from 
the  middle  of  your  breast  upward  you  will  not  be 
wet.  But  you  cannot  remain  so.  The  water  will 
soon  float  your  feet  to  the  surface.  You  cannot 
swim  on  your  back  and  make  any  progress  of  any 
consequence,  because  your  feet  stick  away  above 
the  surface,  and  there  is  nothing  to  propel  yourself 
with  but  your  heels.  If  you  swim  on  your  face, 
you  kick  up  the  water  like  a  stern- wheel  boat.  You 
make  no  headway.  A  horse  is  so  top-heavy  that  he 
can  neither  swim  nor  stand  up  in  the  Dead  Sea.  He 
turns  over  on  his  side  at  once.  Some  of  us  bathed 
for  more  than  an  hour,  and  then  came  out  coated 
with  salt  till  we  shone  like  icicles.  We  scrubbed  it 
off  with  a  coarse  towel  and  rode  off  with  a  splendid 
brand-new  smell,  though  it  was  one  which  was  not 
any  more  disagreeable  than  those  we  have  been  for 
several  weeks  enjoying.  It  was  the  variegated  vil- 
lainy and  novelty  of  it  that  charmed  us.  Salt  crystals 
glitter  in  the  sun  about  the  shores  of  the  lake.  In 
places  they  coat  the  ground  like  a  brilliant  crust  of  ice. 

344 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  somehow  got  the  impression 
that  the  river  Jordan  was  four  thousand  miles  long 
and  thirty-five  miles  wide.  It  is  only  ninety  miles 
long,  and  so  crooked  that  a  man  does  not  know 
which  side  of  it  he  is  on  half  the  time.  In  going 
ninety  miles  it  does  not  get  over  more  than  fifty 
miles  of  ground.  It  is  not  any  wider  than  Broad- 
way in  New  York.  There  is  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and 
this  Dead  Sea — neither  of  them  twenty  miles  long 
or  thirteen  wide.  And  yet  when  I  was  in  Sunday- 
school  I  thought  they  were  sixty  thousand  miles  in 
diameter. 

Travel  and  experience  mar  the  grandest  pictures 
and  rob  us  of  the  most  cherished  traditions  of  our 
boyhood.  Well,  let  them  go.  I  have  already  seen 
the  Empire  of  King  Solomon  diminish  to  the  size  of 
the  State  of  Pennsylvania ;  I  suppose  I  can  bear  the 
reduction  of  the  seas  and  the  river. 

We  looked  everywhere,  as  we  passed  along,  but 
never  saw  grain  or  crystal  of  Lot's  wife.  It  was  a 
great  disappointment.  For  many  and  many  a  year 
we  had  known  her  sad  story,  and  taken  that  interest 
in  her  which  misfortune  always  inspires.  But  she 
was  gone.  Her  picturesque  form  no  longer  looms 
above  the  desert  of  the  Dead  Sea  to  remind  the 
tourist  of  the  doom  that  fell  upon  the  lost  cities. 

I  cannot  describe  the  hideous  afternoon's  ride 
from  the  Dead  Sea  to  Mars  Saba.  It  oppresses  me 
yet,  to  think  of  it.  The  sun  so  pelted  us  that  the 
tears  ran  down  our  cheeks  once  or  twice.  The 
ghastly,  treeless,  grassless,  breathless  canons  smoth- 
ered us  as  if  we  had  been  in  an  oven.     The  sun  had 

345 


MARK    TWAIN 

positive  weight  to  it,  I  think.  Not  a  man  could  sit 
erect  under  it.  All  drooped  low  in  the  saddles. 
John  preached  in  this  "Wilderness"!  It  must  have 
been  exhausting  work.  What  a  very  heaven  the 
massy  towers  and  ramparts  of  vast  Mars  Saba  looked 
to  us  when  we  caught  a  first  glimpse  of  them! 

We  stayed  at  this  great  convent  all  night,  guests 
of  the  hospitable  priests.  Mars  Saba,  perched  upon 
a  crag,  a  human  nest  stuck  high  up  against  a  per- 
pendicular mountain  wall,  is  a  world  of  grand 
masonry  that  rises,  terrace  upon  terrace,  away  above 
your  head,  like  the  terraced  and  retreating  colonnades 
one  sees  in  fanciful  pictures  of  Belshazzar's  Feast 
and  the  palaces  of  the  ancient  Pharaohs.  No  other 
human  dwelling  is  near.  It  was  founded  many  ages 
ago  by  a  holy  recluse  who  lived  at  first  in  a  cave  in 
the  rock — a  cave  which  is  inclosed  in  the  convent 
walls  now,  and  was  reverently  shown  to  us  by  the 
priests.  This  recluse,  by  his  rigorous  torturing  of 
his  flesh,  his  diet  of  bread  and  water,  his  utter  with- 
drawal from  all  society  and  from  the  vanities  of  the 
world,  and  his  constant  prayer  and  saintly  contem- 
plation of  a  skull,  inspired  an  emulation  that  brought 
about  him  many  disciples.  The  precipice  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  canon  is  well  perforated  with 
the  small  holes  they  dug  in  the  rock  to  live  in.  The 
present  occupants  of  Mars  Saba,  about  seventy  in 
number,  are  all  hermits.  They  wear  a  coarse  robe, 
an  ugly,  brimless  stove-pipe  of  a  hat,  and  go  with- 
out shoes.  They  eat  nothing  whatever  but  bread 
and  salt ;  they  drink  nothing  but  water.  As  long  as 
they  live  they  can  never  go  outside  the  walls,  or 

346 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Ifook  upon  a  woman — for  no  woman  is  permitted  to 
enter  Mars  Saba,  upon  any  pretext  whatsoever. 

Some  of  those  men  have  been  shut  up  there  for 
thirty  years.  In  all  that  dreary  time  they  have  not 
heard  the  laughter  of  a  child  or  the  blessed  voice  of 
a  woman;  they  have  seen  no  human  tears,  no 
human  smiles ;  they  have  known  no  human  joys,  no 
wholesome  human  sorrows.  In  their  hearts  are  no 
memories  of  the  past,  in  their  brains  no  dreams  of 
the  future.  All  that  is  lovable,  beautiful,  worthy, 
they  have  put  far  away  from  them ;  against  all  things 
that  are  pleasant  to  look  upon,  and  all  sounds  that 
are  music  to  the  ear,  they  have  barred  their  massive 
doors  and  reared  their  relentless  walls  of  stone  for- 
ever. They  have  banished  the  tender  grace  of  life 
and  left  only  the  sapped  and  skinny  mockery. 
Their  lips  are  lips  that  never  kiss  and  never  sing; 
their  hearts  are  hearts  that  never  hate  and  never 
love;  their  breasts  are  breasts  that  never  swell  with 
the  sentiment,  "I  have  a  country  and  a  flag." 
They  are  dead  men  who  walk. 

I  set  down  these  first  thoughts  because  they  are 
natural — not  because  they  are  just  or  because  it  is 
right  to  set  them  down.  It  is  easy  for  bookmakers 
to  say  "I  thought  so  and  so  as  I  looked  upon  such 
and  such  a  scene" — when  the  truth  is,  they  thought 
all  those  fine  things  afterward.  One's  first  thought 
is  not  likely  to  be  strictly  accurate,  yet  it  is  no 
crime  to  think  it  and  none  to  write  it  down,  subject 
to  modification  by  later  experience.  These  hermits 
are  dead  men,  in  several  respects,  but  not  in  all; 
and  it  is  not  proper  that,  thinking  ill  of  them  at 

347 


MARK    TWAIN 

first,  I  should  go  on  doing  so,  or,  speaking  ill  of 
them,  I  should  reiterate  the  words  and  stick  to  them. 
No,  they  treated  us  too  kindly  for  that.  There  is 
something  human  about  them  somewhere.  They 
knew  we  were  foreigners  and  Protestants,  and  not 
likely  to  feel  admiration  or  much  friendliness  toward 
them.  But  their  large  charity  was  above  consider- 
ing such  things.  They  simply  saw  in  us  men  who 
were  hungry,  and  thirsty,  and  tired,  and  that  was 
sufficient.  They  opened  their  doors  and  gave  us 
welcome.  They  asked  no  questions,  and  they  made 
no  self-righteous  display  of  their  hospitality.  They 
fished  for  no  compliments.  They  moved  quietly 
about,  setting  the  table  for  us,  making  the  beds, 
and  bringing  water  to  wash  in,  and  paid  no  heed 
when  we  said  it  was  wrong  for  them  to  do  that  when 
we  had  men  whose  business  it  was  to  perform  such 
offices.  We  fared  most  comfortably,  and  sat  late  at 
dinner.  We  walked  all  over  the  building  with  the 
hermits  afterward,  and  then  sat  on  the  lofty  battle- 
ments and  smoked  while  we  enjoyed  the  cool  air,  the 
wild  scenery,  and  the  sunset.  One  or  two  chose 
cozy  bedrooms  to  sleep  in,  but  the  nomadic  instinct 
prompted  the  rest  to  sleep  on  the  broad  divan  that 
extended  around  the  great  hall,  because  it  seemed 
like  sleeping  out-of-doors,  and  so  was  more  cheery 
and  inviting.     It  was  a  royal  rest  we  had. 

When  we  got  up  to  breakfast  in  the  morning,  we 
were  new  men.  For  all  this  hospitality  no  strict 
charge  was  made.  We  could  give  something  if  we 
chose;  we  need  give  nothing,  if  we  were  poor  or  if 
we  were  stingy.     The  pauper  and  the  miser  are  as 

^8 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

free  as  any  in  the  Catholic  convents  of  Palestine.  1 
have  been  educated  to  enmity  toward  everything 
that  is  Catholic,  and  sometimes,  in  consequence  of 
this,  I  find  it  much  easier  to  discover  Catholic  faults 
than  Catholic  merits.  But  there  is  one  thing  I  feel 
no  disposition  to  overlook,  and  no  disposition  to 
forget;  and  that  is,  the  honest  gratitude  I  and  all 
pilgrims  owe  to  the  Convent  Fathers  in  Palestine. 
Their  doors  are  always  open,  and  there  is  always  a 
welcome  for  any  worthy  man  who  comes,  whether 
he  comes  in  rags  or  clad  in  purple.  The  Catholic 
convents  are  a  priceless  blessing  to  the  poor.  A 
pilgrim  without  money,  whether  he  be  a  Protestant 
or  a  Catholic,  can  travel  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Palestine,  and  in  the  midst  of  her  desert  wastes  find 
wholesome  food  and  a  clean  bed  every  night,  in 
these  buildings.  Pilgrims  in  better  circumstances 
are  often  stricken  down  by  the  sun  and  the  fevers  of 
the  country,  and  then  their  saving  refuge  is  the  con- 
vent. Without  these  hospitable  retreats,  travel  in 
Palestine  would  be  a  pleasure  which  none  but  the 
strongest  men  could  dare  to  undertake.  Our  party, 
pilgrims  and  all,  will  always  be  ready  and  always 
willing  to  touch  glasses  and  drink  health,  prosperity, 
and  long  life  to  the  Convent  Fathers  of  Palestine. 
So,  rested  and  refreshed,  we  fell  into  line  and 
filed  away  over  the  barren  mountains  of  Judea,  and 
along  rocky  ridges  and  through  sterile  gorges,  where 
eternal  silence  and  solitude  reigned.  Even  the  scat- 
tering groups  of  armed  shepherds  we  met  the  after- 
noon before,  tending  their  flocks  of  long-haired 
goats,  were  wanting  here.     We  saw  but  two  living 

349 


MARK    TWAIN 

creatures.  They  were  gazelles  of  ''soft-eyed"  noto- 
riety. They  looked  like  very  young  kids,  but  they 
annihilated  distance  like  an  express-train.  I  have 
not  seen  animals  that  moved  faster,  unless  I  might 
say  it  of  the  antelopes  of  our  own  great  plains. 

At  nine  or  ten  in  the  morning  we  reached  the 
Plain  of  the  Shepherds,  and  stood  in  a  walled  garden 
of  olives  where  the  shepherds  were  watching  their 
flocks  by  night,  eighteen  centuries  ago,  when  the 
multitudes  of  angels  brought  them  the  tidings  that 
the  Saviour  was  born.  A  quarter  of  a  mile  away 
was  Bethlehem  of  Judea,  and  the  pilgrims  took  some 
of  the  stone  wall  and  hurried  on. 

The  Plain  of  the  Shepherds  is  a  desert,  paved 
with  loose  stones,  void  of  vegetation,  glaring  in  the 
fierce  sun.  Only  the  music  of  the  angels  it  knew 
once  could  charm  its  shrubs  and  flowers  to  life  again 
and  restore  its  vanished  beauty.  No  less  potent 
enchantment  could  avail  to  work  this  miracle. 

In  the  huge  Church  of  the  Nativity,  in  Bethlehem, 
built  fifteen  hundred  years  ago  by  the  inveterate  St. 
Helena,  they  took  us  below-ground,  and  into  a  grot- 
to cut  in  the  living  rock.  This  was  the  "  manger " 
where  Christ  was  born.  A  silver  star  set  in  the 
floor  bears  a  Latin  inscription  to  that  effect.  It 
is  polished  with  the  kisses  of  many  generations  of 
worshiping  pilgrims.  The  grotto  was  tricked  out 
in  the  usual  tasteless  style  observable  in  all  the 
holy  places  of  Palestine.  As  in  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulcher,  envy  and  uncharitableness  were 
apparent  here.  The  priests  and  the  members  of  the 
Greek   and   Latin   churches   cannot   .ome   by   the 

35o 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

same  corridor  to  kneel  in  the  sacred  birthplace 
of  the  Redeemer,  but  are  compelled  to  approach 
and  retire  by  different  avenues,  lest  they  quarrel 
and  fight  on  this  holiest  ground  on  earth. 

I  have  no  "meditations,"  suggested  by  this  spot 
where  the  very  first  "Merry  Christmas !"  was  ut- 
tered in  all  the  world,  and  from  whence  the  friend 
of  my  childhood,  Santa  Claus,  departed  on  his  first 
journey  to  gladden  and  continue  to  gladden  roaring 
firesides  on  wintry  mornings  in  many  a  distant  land 
forever  and  forever.  I  touch,  with  reverent  finger, 
the  actual  spot  where  the  infant  Jesus  lay,  but  I 
think — nothing. 

You  cannot  think  in  this  place  any  more  than  you 
can  in  any  other  in  Palestine  that  would  be  likely 
to  inspire  reflection.  Beggars,  cripples,  and  monks 
compass  you  about,  and  make  you  think  only  of 
bucksheesh  when  you  would  rather  think  of  some- 
thing more  in  keeping  with  the  character  of  the  spot. 

I  was  glad  to  get  away,  and  glad  when  we  had 
walked  through  the  grottoes  where  Eusebius  wrote, 
and  Jerome  fasted,  and  Joseph  prepared  for  the 
flight  into  Egypt,  and  the  dozen  other  distinguished 
grottoes,  and  knew  we  were  done.  The  Church  of 
the  Nativity  is  almost  as  well  packed  with  exceeding 
holy  places  as  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulcl/er  it- 
self. They  even  have  in  it  a  grotto  wherein  twenty 
thousand  children  were  slaughtered  by  Herod  when 
he  was  seeking  the  life  of  the  infant  Saviour. 

We  went  to  the  Milk  Grotto,  of  course — a  cavern 
where  Mary  hid  herself  for  a  while  before  the  flight 
into  Egypt.     Its  walls  were  black  before  she  entered, 

35i 


MARK    TWAIN 

but  in  suckling  the  Child,  a  drop  of  her  milk  feu 
upon  the  floor  and  instantly  changed  the  darkness 
of  the  walls  to  its  own  snowy  hue.  We  took  many 
little  fragments  of  stone  from  here,  because  it  is 
well  known  in  all  the  East  that  a  barren  woman 
hath  need  only  to  touch  her  lips  to  one  of  these  and 
her  failing  will  depart  from  her.  We  took  many 
specimens,  to  the  end  that  we  might  confer  happi- 
ness upon  certain  households  that  we  wot  of. 

We  got  away  from  Bethlehem  and  its  troops  of 
beggars  and  relic-peddlers  in  the  afternoon,  and 
after  spending  some  little  time  at  Rachel's  tomb, 
hurried  to  Jerusalem  as  fast  as  possible.  I  never 
was  so  glad  to  get  home  again  before.  I  never  have 
enjoyed  rest  as  I  have  enjoyed  it  during  these  last 
few  hours.  The  journey  to  the  Dead  Sea,  the  Jor- 
dan, and  Bethlehem  was  short,  but  it  was  an  ex- 
hausting one.  Such  roasting  heat,  such  oppressive 
solitude,  and  such  dismal  desolation  cannot  surely 
exist  elsewhere  on  earth.     And  such  fatigue ! 

The  commonest  sagacity  warns  me  that  I  ought 
to  tell  the  customary  pleasant  lie,  and  say  I  tore 
myself  reluctantly  away  from  every  noted  place  in 
Palestine.  Everybody  tells  that,  but  with  as  little 
ostentation  as  I  may,  I  doubt  the  word  of  every  he 
who  tells  it.  I  could  take  a  dreadful  oath  that  I 
have  never  heard  any  one  of  our  forty  pilgrims  say 
anything  of  the  sort,  and  they  are  as  worthy  and  as 
sincerely  devout  as  any  that  come  here.  They 
will  say  it  when  they  get  home,  fast  enough,  but 
why  should  they  not?  They  do  not  wish  to  array 
themselves  against  all  the  Lamartines  and  Grimeses 

352 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

in  the  world.  It  does  not  stand  to  reason  that  men 
are  reluctant  to  leave  places  where  the  very  life  is 
almost  badgered  out  of  them  by  importunate  swarms 
of  beggars  and  peddlers  who  hang  in  strings  to 
one's  sleeves  and  coat-tails  and  shriek  and  shout  in 
his  ears  and  horrify  his  vision  with  the  ghastly  sores 
and  malformations  they  exhibit.  One  is  glad  to  get 
away.  I  have  heard  shameless  people  say  they  were 
glad  to  get  away  from  Ladies'  Festivals  where  they 
were  importuned  to  buy  by  bevies  of  lovely  young 
ladies.  Transform  those  hour  is  into  dusky  hags 
and  ragged  savages,  and  replace  their  rounded 
forms  with  shrunken  and  knotted  distortions,  their 
soft  hands  with  scarred  and  hideous  deformities,  and 
the  persuasive  music  of  their  voices  with  the  dis- 
cordant din  of  a  hated  language,  and  then  see  how 
much  lingering  reluctance  to  leave  could  be  mustered. 
No,  it  is  the  neat  thing  to  say  you  were  reluctant, 
and  then  append  the  profound  thoughts  that  ' '  strug- 
gled for  utterance"  in  your  brain;  but  it  is  the  true 
thing  to  say  you  were  not  reluctant,  and  found  it 
impossible  to  think  at  all — though  in  good  sooth 
it  is  not  respectable  to  say  it,  and  not  poetical, 
either. 

We  do  not  think,  in  the  holy  places;  we  think  in 
bed,  afterward,  when  the  glare,  and  the  noise,  and 
the  confusion  are  gone,  and  in  fancy  we  revisit 
alone  the  solemn  monuments  of  the  past,  and 
summon  the  phantom  pageants  of  an  age  that  has 
passed  away. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

WE  visited  all  the  holy  places  about  Jerusalem 
which  we  had  left  unvisited  when  we  jour- 
neyed to  the  Jordan,  and  then,  about  three  o'clock 
one  afternoon,  we  fell  into  procession  and  marched 
out  at  the  stately  Damascus  gate,  and  the  walls  of 
Jerusalem  shut  us  out  forever.  We  paused  on  the 
summit  of  a  distant  hill  and  took  a  final  look  and 
made  a  final  farewell  to  the  venerable  city  which  had 
been  such  a  good  home  to  us. 

For  about  four  hours  we  traveled  down-hill  con- 
stantly. We  followed  a  narrow  bridle-path  which 
traversed  the  beds  of  the  mountain  gorges,  and 
when  we  could  we  got  out  of  the  way  of  the  long 
trains  of  laden  camels  and  asses,  and  when  we  could 
not  we  suffered  the  misery  of  being  mashed  up 
against  perpendicular  walls  of  rock  and  having  our 
legs  bruised  by  the  passing  freight.  Jack  was  caught 
two  or  three  times,  and  Dan  and  Moult  as  often. 
One  horse  had  a  heavy  fall  on  the  slippery  rocks, 
and  the  others  had  narrow  escapes.  However,  this 
was  as  good  a  road  as  we  had  found  in  Palestine, 
and  possibly  even  the  best,  and  so  there  was  not 
much  grumbling. 

Sometimes,  in  the  glens,  we  came  upon  luxuriant 
orchards  of  figs,  apricots,  pomegranates,  and  such 

354 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

things,  but  oftener  the  scenery  was  rugged,  moun- 
tainous, verdureless,  and  forbidding.  Here  and 
there,  towers  were  perched  high  up  on  acclivities 
which  seemed  almost  inaccessible.  This  fashion  is 
as  old  as  Palestine  itself,  and  was  adopted  in  ancient 
times  for  security  against  enemies. 

We  crossed  the  brook  which  furnished  David  the 
stone  that  killed  Goliah,  and,  no  doubt,  we  looked 
upon  the  very  ground  whereon  that  noted  battle  was 
fought.  We  passed  by  a  picturesque  old  gothic 
ruin  whose  stone  pavements  had  rung  to  the  armed 
heels  of  many  a  valorous  Crusader,  and  we  rode 
through  a  piece  of  country  which  we  were  told  once 
knew  Samson  as  a  citizen. 

We  stayed  all  night  with  the  good  monks  at  the 
convent  of  Ramleh,  and  in  the  morning  got  up  and 
galloped  the  horses  a  good  part  of  the  distance  from 
there  to  Jaffa,  or  Joppa,  for  the  plain  was  as  level  as 
a  floor  and  free  from  stones,  and  besides  this  was 
our  last  march  in  Holy  Land.  These  two  or  three 
hours  finished,  we  and  the  tired  horses  could  have 
rest  and  sleep  as  long  as  we  wanted  it.  This  was  the 
plain  of  which  Joshua  spoke  when  he  said, "Sun, 
stand  thou  still  on  Gibeon,  and  thou  moon  in  the 
valley  of  Ajalon."  As  we  drew  near  to  Jaffa,  the 
boys  spurred  up  the  horses  and  indulged  in  the  excite- 
ment of  an  actual  race — an  experience  we  had  hardly 
had  since  we  raced  on  donkeys  in  the  Azores  islands. 

We  came  finally  to  the  noble  grove  of  orange 
trees  in  which  the  Oriental  city  of  Jaffa  lies  buried; 
we  passed  through  the  walls,  and  rode  again  down 
narrow  streets  and  among  swarms  of  animated  rags, 

355 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  saw  other  sights  and  had  other  experiences  we 
had  long  been  familiar  with.  We  dismounted,  for 
the  last  time,  and  out  in  the  offing,  riding  at  anchor, 
we  saw  the  ship!  I  put  an  exclamation-point  there 
because  we  felt  one  when  we  saw  the  vessel.  The 
long  pilgrimage  was  ended,  and  somehow  we  seemed 
to  feel  glad  of  it. 

[For  description  of  Jaffa,  see  Universal  Gazet- 
teer.] Simon  the  Tanner  formerly  lived  here.  We 
went  to  his  house.  All  the  pilgrims  visit  Simon  the 
Tanner's  house.  Peter  saw  the  vision  of  the  beasts 
let  down  in  a  sheet  when  he  lay  upon  the  roof  of 
Simon  the  Tanner's  house.  It  was  from  Jaffa  that 
Jonah  sailed  when  he  was  told  to  go  and  prophesy 
against  Nineveh,  and,  no  doubt,  it  was  not  far  from 
the  town  that  the  whale  threw  him  up  when  he  dis- 
covered that  he  had  no  ticket.  Jonah  was  dis- 
obedient, and  of  a  faultfinding,  complaining  dispo- 
sition, and  deserves  to  be  lightly  spoken  of,  almost. 
The  timbers  used  in  the  construction  of  Solomon's 
temple  were  floated  to  Jaffa  in  rafts,  and  the  narrow 
opening  in  the  reef  through  which  they  passed  to 
the  shore  is  not  an  inch  wider  or  a  shade  less  danger- 
ous to  navigate  than  it  was  then.  Such  is  the  sleepy 
nature  of  the  population  Palestine's  only  good  sea- 
port has  now  and  always  had.  Jaffa  has  a  history 
and  a  stirring  one.  It  will  not  be  discovered  any- 
where in  this  book.  If  the  reader  will  call  at  the 
circulating  library  and  mention  my  name,  he  will  be 
furnished  with  books  which  will  afford  him  the 
fullest  information  concerning  Jaffa. 

So  ends  the  pilgrimage.  We  ought  to  be  glad 
356 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

that  we  did  not  make  it  for  the  purpose  of  feasting 
our  eyes  upon  fascinating  aspects  of  nature,  for  we 
should  have  been  disappointed — at  least  at  this 
season  of  the  year.  A  writer  in  Life  in  the  Holy 
Land  observes : 

Monotonous  and  uninviting  as  much  of  the  Holy  Land  will 
appear  to  persons  accustomed  to  the  almost  constant  verdure 
of  flowers,  ample  streams,  and  varied  surface  of  our  own  country, 
we  must  remember  that  its  aspect  to  the  Israelites  after  the 
weary  march  of  forty  years  through  the  desert  must  have  been 
very  different. 

Which  all  of  us  will  freely  grant.  But  it  truly  is 
"monotonous  and  uninviting,"  and  there  is  no  suffi- 
cient reason  for  describing  it  as  being  otherwise. 

Of  all  the  lands  there  are  for  dismal  scenery,  I 
think  Palestine  must  be  the  prince.  The  hills  are 
barren,  they  are  dull  of  color,  they  are  unpicturesque 
in  shape.  The  valleys  are  unsightly  deserts  fringed 
with  a  feeble  vegetation  that  has  an  expression  about 
it  of  being  sorrowful  and  despondent.  The  Dead 
Sea  and  the  Sea  of  Galilee  sleep  in  the  midst  of  a 
vast  stretch  of  hill  and  plain  wherein  the  eye  rests 
j/)on  no  pleasant  tint,  no  striking  object,  no  soft 
picture  dreaming  in  a  purple  haze  or  mottled  with 
the  shadows  of  the  clouds.  Every  outline  is  harsh, 
every  feature  is  distinct,  there  is  no  perspective — 
distance  works  no  enchantment  here.  It  is  a  hope- 
less, dreary,  heartbroken  land. 

Small  shreds  and  patches  of  it  must  be  very  beau- 
tiful in  the  full  flush  of  spring,  however,  and  all  the 
more  beautiful  by  contrast  with  the  far-reaching 
desolation  that  surrounds  them  on  every  side.     I 

357 


MARK    TWAIN 

would  like  much  to  see  the  fringes  of  the  Jordan  in 
springtime,  and  Shechem,  Esdraelon,  Ajalon,  and 
the  borders  of  Galilee — but  even  then  these  spots 
would  seem  mere  toy  gardens  set  at  wide  intervals 
in  the  waste  of  a  limitless  desolation. 

Palestine  sits  in  sackcloth  and  ashes.  Over  it 
broods  the  spell  of  a  curse  that  has  withered  its  fields 
and  fettered  its  energies.  Where  Sodom  and  Gomor- 
rah reared  their  domes  and  towers,  that  solemn  sea 
now  floods  the  plain,  in  whose  bitter  waters  no 
living  thing  exists — over  whose  waveless  surface  the 
blistering  air  hangs  motionless  and  dead — about 
whose  borders  nothing  grows  but  weeds,  and  scat- 
tering tufts  of  cane,  and  that  treacherous  fruit  that 
promises  refreshment  to  parching  lips,  but  turns  to 
ashes  at  the  touch.  Nazareth  is  forlorn ;  about  that 
ford  of  Jordan  where  the  hosts  of  Israel  entered  the 
Promised  Land  with  songs  of  rejoicing,  one  finds 
only  a  squalid  camp  of  fantastic  Bedouins  of  the 
desert;  Jericho  the  accursed  lies  a  moldering  ruin 
to-day,  even  as  Joshua's  miracle  left  it  more  than 
three  thousand  years  ago;  Bethlehem  and  Bethany, 
in  their  poverty  and  their  humiliation,  have  nothing 
about  them  now  to  remind  one  that  they  once  knew 
the  high  honor  of  the  Saviour's  presence;  the  hal- 
lowed spot  where  the  shepherds  watched  their  flocks 
by  night,  and  where  the  angels  sang  Peace  on  earth, 
good  will  to  men,  is  untenanted  by  any  living  crea- 
ture, and  unblessed  by  any  feature  that  is  pleasant 
to  the  eye.  Renowned  Jerusalem  itself,  the  stateliest 
name  in  history,  has  lost  all  its  ancient  grandeur, 
and  is  become  a  pauper  village;   the  riches  of  Solo- 

358 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

mon  are  no  longer  there  to  compel  the  admiration 
of  visiting  Oriental  queens;  the  wonderful  temple 
which  was  the  pride  and  the  glory  of  Israel  is  gone, 
and  the  Ottoman  crescent  is  lifted  above  the  spot 
where,  on  that  most  memorable  day  in  the  annals  of 
the  world,  they  reared  the  Holy  Cross.  The  noted 
Sea  of  Galilee,  where  Roman  fleets  once  rode  at 
anchor  and  the  disciples  of  the  Saviour  sailed  in 
their  ships,  was  long  ago  deserted  by  the  devotees 
of  war  and  commerce,  and  its  borders  are  a  silent 
wilderness ;  Capernaum  is  a  shapeless  ruin ;  Magdala 
is  the  home  of  beggared  Arabs;  Bethsaida  and 
Chorazin  have  vanished  from  the  earth,  and  the 
" desert  places"  round  about  them  where  thousands 
of  men  once  listened  to  the  Saviour's  voice  and  ate  the 
miraculous  bread  sleep  in  the  hush  of  a  solitude  that 
is  inhabited  only  by  birds  of  prey  and  skulking  foxes. 

Palestine  is  desolate  and  unlovely.  And  why 
should  it  be  otherwise?  Can  the  curse  of  the  Deity 
beautify  a  land  ? 

Palestine  is  no  more  of  this  work-day  world.  It 
is  sacred  to  poetry  and  tradition — it  is  dream-land. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

IT  was  worth  a  kingdom  to  be  at  sea  again.  It 
was  a  relief  to  drop  all  anxiety  whatsoever — all 
questions  as  to  where  we  should  go;  how  long  we 
should  stay;  whether  it  were  worth  while  to  go  or 
not;  all  anxieties  about  the  condition  of  the  horses; 
all  such  questions  as  "Shall  we  ever  get  to  water?" 
"Shall  we  ever  lunch?"  "Ferguson,  how  many 
more  million  miles  have  we  got  to  creep  under  this 
awful  sun  before  we  camp?"  It  was  a  relief  to  cast 
all  these  torturing  little  anxieties  far  away — ropes 
of  steel  they  were,  and  every  one  with  a  separate 
and  distinct  strain  on  it — and  feel  the  temporary 
contentment  that  is  born  of  the  banishment  of  all 
care  and  responsibility.  We  did  not  look  at  the 
compass;  we  did  not  care,  now,  where  the  ship 
went  to,  so  that  she  went  out  of  sight  of  land  as 
quickly  as  possible.  When  I  travel  again,  I  wish  to 
go  in  a  pleasure  ship.  No  amount  of  money  could 
have  purchased  for  us,  in  a  strange  vessel  and  among 
unfamiliar  faces,  the  perfect  satisfaction  and  the 
sense  of  being  at  home  again  which  we  experienced 
when  we  stepped  on  board  the  Quaker  City, — our 
own  ship — after  this  wearisome  pilgrimage.  It  is  a 
something  we  have  felt  always  when  we  returned  to 
her,  and  a  something  we  had  no  desire  to  sell. 

360 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

We  took  off  our  blue  woolen  shirts,  our  spurs 
and  heavy  boots,  our  sanguinary  revolvers  and  our 
buckskin-seated  pantaloons,  and  got  shaved,  and 
came  out  in  Christian  costume  once  more.  All  but 
Jack,  who  changed  all  other  articles  of  his  dress,  but 
clung  to  his  traveling-pantaloons.  They  still  pre- 
served their  ample  buckskin  seat  intact;  and  so  his 
short  pea-jacket  and  his  long,  thin  legs  assisted  to 
make  him  a  picturesque  object  whenever  he  stood 
on  the  forecastle  looking  abroad  upon  the  ocean 
over  the  bows.  At  such  times  his  father's  last 
injunction  suggested  itself  to  me.     He  said: 

"Jack,  my  boy,  you  are  about  to  go  among  a 
brilliant  company  of  gentlemen  and  ladies,  who  are 
refined  and  cultivated,  and  thoroughly  accomplished 
in  the  manners  and  customs  of  good  society.  Listen 
to  their  conversation,  study  their  habits  of  life,  and 
learn.  Be  polite  and  obliging  to  all,  and  considerate 
toward  every  one's  opinions,  failings,  and  preju- 
dices. Command  the  just  respect  of  all  your  fellow- 
voyagers,  even  though  you  fail  to  win  their  friendly 
regard.  And  Jack — don't  you  ever  dare,  while  you 
live,  appear  in  public  on  those  decks  in  fair  weather, 
in  a  costume  unbecoming  your  mother's  drawing- 
room!" 

It  would  have  been  worth  any  price  if  the  father 
of  this  hopeful  youth  could  have  stepped  on  board 
some  time,  and  seen  him  standing  high  on  the  fore- 
castle, pea-jacket,  tasseled  red  fez,  buckskin  patch 
and  all, — placidly  contemplating  the  ocean — a  rare 
spectacle  for  anybody's  drawing-room. 

After  a  pleasant  voyage  and  a  good  rest,  we  drew 
361 


MARK    TWAIN 

near  to  Egypt,  and  out  of  the  mellowest  of  sunsets 
we  saw  the  domes  and  minarets  of  Alexandria  rise 
into  view.  As  soon  as  the  anchor  was  down,  Jack 
and  I  got  a  boat  and  went  ashore.  It  was  night  by 
this  time,  and  the  other  passengers  were  content  to 
remain  at  home  and  visit  ancient  Egypt  after  break- 
fast. It  was  the  way  they  did  at  Constantinople. 
They  took  a  lively  interest  in  new  countries,  but 
their  school-boy  impatience  had  worn  off,  and  they 
had  learned  that  it  was  wisdom  to  take  things  easy 
and  go  along  comfortably — these  old  countries  do  not 
go  away  in  the  night.;  they  stay  till  after  breakfast. 

When  we  reached  the  pier  we  found  an  army  of 
Egyptian  boys  with  donkeys  no  larger  than  them- 
selves, waiting  for  passengers — for  donkeys  are  the 
omnibuses  of  Egypt.  We  preferred  to  walk,  but 
we  could  not  have  our  own  way.  The  boys  crowded 
about  us,  clamored  around  us,  and  slewed  their 
donkeys  exactly  across  our  path,  no  matter  which 
way  we  turned.  They  were  good-natured  rascals, 
and  so  were  the  donkeys.  We  mounted,  and  the 
boys  ran  behind  us  and  kept  the  donkeys  in  a 
furious  gallop,  as  is  the  fashion  at  Damascus.  I 
believe  I  would  rather  ride  a  donkey  than  any  beast 
in  the  world.  He  goes  briskly,  he  puts  on  no  airs, 
he  is  docile,  though  opinionated.  Satan  himself 
could  not  scare  him,  and  he  is  convenient — very 
convenient.  When  you  are  tired  riding  you  can 
rest  your  feet  on  the-  ground  and  let  him  gallop  from 
under  you. 

We  found  the  hotel  and  secured  rooms,  and  were 
happy  to  know  that  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  stopped 

362 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

there  once.  They  had  it  everywhere  on  signs.  No 
other  princes  had  stopped  there  since,  till  Jack  and 
I  came.  We  went  abroad  through  the  town,  then, 
and  found  it  a  city  of  huge  commercial  buildings, 
of  broad,  handsome  streets  brilliant  with  gaslight. 
By  night  it  was  a  sort  of  reminiscence  of  Paris. 
But  finally  Jack  found  an  ice-cream  saloon,  and  that 
closed  investigations  for  that  evening.  The  weather 
was  very  hot,  it  had  been  many  a  day  since  Jack 
had  seen  ice-cream,  and  so  it  was  useless  to  talk  of 
leaving  the  saloon  till  it  shut  up. 

In  the  morning  the  lost  tribes  of  America  came 
ashore  and  infested  the  hotels  and  took  possession 
of  all  the  donkeys  and  other  open  barouches  that 
offered.  They  went  in  picturesque  procession  to 
the  American  Consul's;  to  the  great  gardens;  to 
Cleopatra's  Needles;  to  Pompey's  Pillar;  to  the 
palace  of  the  Viceroy  of  Egypt;  to  the  Nile;  to  the 
superb  groves  of  date-palms.  One  of  our  most 
inveterate  relic-hunters  had  his  hammer  with  him, 
and  tried  to  break  a  fragment  off  the  upright  Needle 
and  could  not  do  it;  he  tried  the  prostrate  one 
and  failed;  he  borrowed  a  heavy  sledge-hammer 
from  a  mason  and  failed  again.  He  tried  Pompey's 
Pillar,  and  this  baffled  him.  Scattered  all  about  the 
mighty  monolith  were  sphinxes  of  noble  counte- 
nance, carved  out  of  Egyptian  granite  as  hard  as 
blue  steel,  and  whose  shapely  features  the  wear  of 
five  thousand  years  had  failed  to  mark  or  mar.  The 
relic-hunter  battered  at  these  persistently,  and 
sweated  profusely  over  his  work.  He  might  as  well 
have  attempted  to  deface  the  moon.     They  regarded 

363 


MARK    TWAIN 

him  serenely  with  the  stately  smile  they  had  worn 
so  long,  and  which  seemed  to  say,  "Peck  away, 
poor  insect;  we  were  not  made  to  fear  such  as  you; 
in  tenscore  dragging  ages  we  have  seen  more  of 
your  kind  than  there  are  sands  at  your  feet;  have 
they  left  a  blemish  upon  us?" 

But  I  am  forgetting  the  Jaffa  Colonists.  At  Jaffa 
we  had  taken  on  board  some  forty  members  of  a 
very  celebrated  community.  They  were  male  and 
female;  babies,  young  boys  and  young  girls;  young 
married  people,  and  some  who  had  passed  a  shade 
beyond  the  prime  of  life.  I  refer  to  the  "Adams 
Jaffa  Colony."  Others  had  deserted  before.  We 
left  in  Jaffa  Mr.  Adams,  his  wife,  and  fifteen  unfor- 
tunates who  not  only  had  no  money  but  did  not 
know  where  to  turn  or  whither  to  go.  Such  was 
the  statement  made  to  us.  Our  forty  were  miserable 
enough  in  the  first  place,  and  they  lay  about  the 
decks  seasick  all  the  voyage,  which  about  completed 
their  misery,  I  take  it.  However,  one  or  two  young 
men  remained  upright,  and  by  constant  persecution 
we  wormed  out  of  them  some  little  information. 
They  gave  it  reluctantly  and  in  a  very  fragmentary 
condition,  for,  having  been  shamefully  humbugged 
by  their  prophet,  they  felt  humiliated  and  unhappy. 
In  such  circumstances  people  do  not  like  to  talk. 

The  colony  was  a  complete  fiasco.  I  have  already 
said  that  such  as  could  get  away  did  so,  from  time 
to  time.  The  prophet  Adams  —  once  an  actor, 
then  several  other  things,  afterward  a  Mormon  and 
a  missionary,  always  an  adventurer — remains  at 
Jaffa  with  his  handful  of  sorrowful  subjects.     The 

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THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

forty  we  brought  away  with  us  were  chiefly  destitute, 
though  not  all  of  them.  They  wished  to  get  to 
Egypt.  What  might  become  of  them  then  they  did 
not  know  and  probably  did  not  care — anything  to 
get  away  from  hated  Jaffa.  They  had  little  to  hope 
for;  because  after  many  appeals  to  the  sympathies 
of  New  England,  made  by  strangers  of  Boston, 
through  the  newspapers,  and  after  the  establishment 
of  an  office  there  for  the  reception  of  moneyed  con- 
tributions for  the  Jaffa  colonists,  one  dollar  was 
subscribed.  The  consul-general  for  Egypt  showed 
me  the  newspaper  paragraph  which  mentioned  the 
circumstance,  and  mentioned  also  the  discontinuance 
of  the  effort  and  the  closing  of  the  office.  It  was 
evident  that  practical  New  England  was  not  sorry  to 
be  rid  of  such  visionaries  and  was  not  in  the  least 
inclined  to  hire  anybody  to  bring  them  back  to  her. 
Still,  to  get  to  Egypt  was  something,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  unfortunate  colonists,  hopeless  as  the  prospect 
seemed  of  ever  getting  further. 

Thus  circumstanced,  they  landed  at  Alexandria 
from  our  ship.  One  of  our  passengers,  Mr.  Moses 
S.  Beach,  of  the  New  York  Sun,  inquired  of  the 
consul-general  what  it  would  cost  to  send  these 
people  to  their  home  in  Maine  by  the  way  of  Liver- 
pool, and  he  said  fifteen  hundred  dollars  in  gold  would 
do  it.  Mr.  Beach  gave  his  check  for  the  money,  and 
so  the  troubles  of  the  Jaffa  colonists  were  at  an  end.1 

1  It  was  an  unselfish  act  of  benevolence;  it  was  done  without  any 
ostentation,  and  has  never  been  mentioned  in  any  newspaper,  I 
think.  Therefore  it  is  refreshing  to  learn  now,  several  months  after 
the  above  narrative  was  written,  that  another  man  received  all  the 
credit  of  this  rescue  of  the  colonists.     Such  is  life. 

365 


MARK    TWAIN 

Alexandria  was  too  much  like  a  European  city  to 
be  novel,  and  we  soon  tired  of  it.  We  took  the  cars 
and  came  up  here  to  ancient  Cairo,  which  is  an 
Oriental  city  and  of  the  completest  pattern.  There 
is  little  about  it  to  disabuse  one's  mind  of  the  error 
if  he  should  take  it  into  his  head  that  he  was  in  the 
heart  of  Arabia.  Stately  camels  and  dromedaries, 
swarthy  Egyptians,  and  likewise  Turks  and  black 
Ethiopians,  turbaned,  sashed,  and  blazing  in  a  rich 
variety  of  Oriental  costumes  of  all  shades  of  flashy 
colors,  are  what  one  sees  on  every  hand  crowding 
the  narrow  streets  and  the  honeycombed  bazars. 
We  are  stopping  at  Shepherd's  Hotel,  which  is  the 
worst  on  earth  except  the  one  I  stopped  at  once  in 
a  small  town  in  the  United  States.  It  is  pleasant  to 
read  this  sketch  in  my  note-book,  now,  and  know 
that  I  can  stand  Shepherd's  Hotel,  sure,  because  I 
have  been  in  one  just  like  it  in  America  and  sur- 
vived : 

I  stopped  at  the  Benton  House.  It  used  to  be  a  good  hotel, 
but  that  proves  nothing — I  used  to  be  a  good  boy,  for  that 
matter.  Both  of  us  have  lost  character  of  late  years.  The 
Benton  is  not  a  good  hotel. 

The  Benton  lacks  a  very  great  deal  of  being  a  good  hotel. 
Perdition  is  full  of  better  hotels  than  the  Benton. 

It  was  late  at  night  when  I  got  there,  and  I  told  the  clerk 
I  would  like  plenty  of  lights,  because  I  wanted  to  read  an  hour 
or  two.  When  I  reached  No.  15  with  the  porter  (we  came 
along  a  dim  hall  that  was  clad  in  ancient  carpeting,  faded, 
worn  out  in  many  places,  and  patched  with  old  scraps  of  oil- 
cloth— a  hall  that  sank  under  one's  feet,  and  creaked  dismally 
to  every  footstep)  he  struck  a  light — two  inches  of  sallow, 
sorrowful,  consumptive  tallow  candle,  that  burned  blue,  and 
sputtered,  and  got  discouraged  and  went  out.  The  porter  lit 
it  again,  and  I  asked  if  that  was  all  the  light  the  clerk  sent. 

366 


THE    INNOCENTS   ABROAD 

He  said,  "Oh  no,  I've  got  another  one  here,"  and  he  produced 
another  couple  of  inches  of  tallow  candle.  I  said,  "Light  them 
both — I'll  have  to  have  one  to  see  the  other  by."  He  did  it, 
but  the  result  was  drearier  than  darkness  itself.  He  was  a 
cheery,  accommodating  rascal.  He  said  he  would  go  "some- 
wheres"  and  steal  a  lamp.  I  abetted  and  encouraged  him  in 
his  criminal  design.  J  heard  the  landlord  get  after  him  in  the 
hall  ten  minutes  afterward. 

"Where  are  you  going  with  that  lamp?" 

"Fifteen  wants  it,  sir." 

"Fifteen!  why  he's  got  a  double  lot  of  candles — does  the  man 
want  to  illuminate  the  house? — does  he  want  to  get  up  a  torch- 
light procession? — what  is  he  up  to,  anyhow?" 

"He  don't  like  them  candles — says  he  wants  a  lamp." 

"Why,  what  in  the  nation  does — why  I  never  heard  of  such 
a  thing?    What  on  earth  can  he  want  with  that  lamp?" 

"Well,  he  only  wants  to  read — that's  what  he  says." 

"Wants  to  read,  does  he? — ain't  satisfied  with  a  thousand 
candles,  but  has  to  have  a  lamp! — I  do  wonder  what  the  devil 
that  fellow  wants  that  lamp  for?  Take  him  another  candle, 
and  then  if — " 

"But  he  wants  the  lamp — says  he'll  burn  the  d — d  old  house 
down  if  he  don't  get  a  lamp!"     [A  remark  which  I  never  made.] 

"I'd  like  to  see  him  at  it  once.  Well,  you  take  it  along — 
but  I  swear  it  beats  my  time,  though — and  see  if  you  can't  find 
out  what  in  the  very  nation  he  wants  with  that  lamp." 

And  he  went  off  growling  to  himself  and  still  wondering  and 
wondering  over  the  unaccountable  conduct  of  No.  15.  The 
lamp  was  a  good  one,  but  it  revealed  some  disagreeable  things — 
a  bed  in  the  suburbs  of  a  desert  of  room — a  bed  that  had  hills  and 
valleys  in  it,  and  you'd  have  to  accommodate  your  body  to  the 
impression  left  in  it  by  the  man  that  slept  there  last,  before 
you  could  He  comfortably;  a  carpet  that  had  seen  better  days; 
a  melancholy  washstand  in  a  remote  corner,  and  a  dejected 
pitcher  on  it  sorrowing  over  a  broken  nose;  a  looking-glass 
split  across  the  center,  which  chopped  your  head  off  at  the  chin 
and  made  you  look  like  some  dreadful  unfinished  monster  or 
other;  the  paper  peeling  in  shreds  from  the  walls. 

I  sighed  and  said:  "This  is  charming;  and  now  don't  you  think 
you  could  get  me  something  to  read?" 

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MARK    TWAIN 

The  porter  said,  "Oh,  certainly;  the  old  man's  got  dead  loads 
of  books" ;  and  he  was  gone  before  I  could  tell  him  what  sort  of  lit- 
erature I  would  rather  have.  And  yet  his  countenance  expressed 
the  utmost  confidence  in  his  ability  to  execute  the  commission 
with  credit  to  himself.     The  old  man  made  a  descent  on  him. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  that  pile  of  books?" 

"Fifteen  wants  'em,  sir." 

"Fifteen,  is  it?  He'll  want  a  warming-pan,  next — he'll  want 
a  nurse!  Take  him  everything  there  is  in  the  house — take  him 
the  barkeeper — take  him  the  baggage-wagon — take  him  the 
chambermaid!  Confound  me,  I  never  saw  anything  like  it. 
What  did  he  say  he  wants  with  those  books?" 

"Wants  to  read  'em,  like  enough;  it  ain't  likely  he  wants 
to  eat  'em,  I  don't  reckon." 

'Wants  to  read  'em — wants  to  read  'em  this  time  of  night, 
the  infernal  lunatic!     Well  he  can't  have  them." 

"But  he  says  he's  mor'ly  bound  to  have  'em:  he  says  he'll 
just  go  a-rairin'  and  a-chargin'  through  this  house  and  raise 
more — well,  there's  no  tellin'  what  he  won't  do  if  he  don't  get 
'em;  because  he's  drunk  and  crazy  and  desperate,  and  nothing  '11 
soothe  him  down  but  them  cussed  books."  [I  had  not  made  any 
threats  and  was  not  in  the  condition  ascribed  to  me  by  the  porter.] 

"Well,  go  on;  but  I  will  be  around  when  he  goes  to  rairing 
and  charging,  and  the  first  rair  he  makes  I'll  make  him  rair 
out  of  the  window."  And  then  the  old  gentleman  went  off 
growling  as  before. 

The  genius  of  that  porter  was  something  wonderful.  He 
put  an  armful  of  books  on  the  bed  and  said  "Good  night" 
as  confidently  as  if  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  those  books 
were  exactly  my  style  of  reading-matter.  And  well  he  might 
His  selection  covered  the  whole  range  of  legitimate  literature. 
It  comprised  The  Great  Consummation,  by  Rev.  Dr.  Cummings 
— theology;  Revised  Statutes  of  the  State  of  Missouri — law;  The 
Complete  Horse-Doctor — medicine;  The  Toilers  of  the  Sea,  by 
Victor  Hugo — romance;  the  works  of  William  Shakespeare — 
poetry.  I  shall  never  cease  to  admire  the  tact  and  the  intel- 
ligence of  that  gifted  porter. 

But  all  the  donkeys  in  Christendom,  and  most  of 
the  Egyptian  boys,  I  think,  are  at  the  door,  and 

363 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

there  is  some  noise  going  on,  not  to  put  it  in  stronger 
language.  We  are  about  starting  to  the  illustrious 
Pyramids  of  Egypt,  and  the  donkeys  for  the  voyage 
are  under  inspection.  I  will  go  and  select  one  before 
the  choice  animals  are  all  taken. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  donkeys  were  all  good,  all  handsome,  all 
strong  and  in  good  condition,  all  fast  and  all 
willing  to  prove  it.  They  were  the  best  we  had 
found  anywhere,  and  the  most  recherche.  I  do  not 
know  what  recherche  is,  but  that  is  what  these 
donkeys  were,  anyhow.  Some  were  of  a  soft  mouse- 
color,  and  the  others  were  white,  black,  and  vari- 
colored. Some  were  close-shaven,  all  over,  except 
that  a  tuft  like  a  paint-brush  was  left  on  the  end  of 
the  tail.  Others  were  so  shaven  in  fanciful  land- 
scape-garden patterns,  as  to  mark  their  bodies  with 
curving  lines,  which  were  bounded  on  one  side  by 
hair  and  on  the  other  by  the  close  plush  left  by  the 
shears.  They  had  all  been  newly  barbered,  and 
were  exceedingly  stylish.  Several  of  the  white  ones 
were  barred  like  zebras  with  rainbow  stripes  of  blue 
and  red  and  yellow  paint.  These  were  indescribably- 
gorgeous.  Dan  and  Jack  selected  from  this  lot  be- 
cause they  brought  back  Italian  reminiscences  of  the 
"old  masters."  The  saddles  were  the  high,  stuffy, 
frog-shaped  things  we  had  known  in  Ephesus  and 
Smyrna.  The  donkey  -  boys  were  lively  young 
Egyptian  rascals  who  could  follow  a  donkey  and 
keep  him  in  a  canter  half  a  day  without  tiring.  W< 
had  plenty  of  spectators  when  we  mounted,  for  th< 

37o 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

hotel  was  full  of  English  people  bound  overland  to 
India  and  officers  getting  ready  for  the  African 
campaign  against  the  Abyssinian  King  Theodorus. 
We  were  not  a  very  large  party,  but  as  we  charged 
through  the  streets  of  the  great  metropolis,  we  made 
noise  for  five  hundred,  and  displayed  activity  and 
created  excitement  in  proportion.  Nobody  can  steer 
a  donkey,  and  some  collided  with  camels,  dervishes, 
effendis,  asses,  beggars,  and  everything  else  that 
offered  to  the  donkeys  a  reasonable  chance  for  a 
collision.  When  we  turned  into  the  broad  avenue 
that  leads  out  of  the  city  toward  Old  Cairo,  there 
was  plenty  of  room.  The  walls  of  stately  date- 
palms  that  fenced  the  gardens  and  bordered  the 
way,  threw  their  shadows  down  and  made  the  air 
cool  and  bracing.  We  rose  to  the  spirit  of  the  time 
and  the  race  became  a  wild  rout,  a  stampede,  a 
terrific  panic.     I  wish  to  live  to  enjoy  it  again. 

Somewhere  along  this  route  we  had  a  few  startling 
exhibitions  of  Oriental  simplicity.  A  girl  apparently 
thirteen  years  of  age  came  along  the  great  thorough- 
fare dressed  like  Eve  before  the  fall.  We  would 
have  called  her  thirteen  at  home ;  but  here  girls  who 
look  thirteen  are  often  not  more  than  nine,  in 
reality. 

Occasionally  we  saw  stark-naked  men  of  superb 
build,  bathing,  and  making  no  attempt  at  conceal- 
ment. However,  an  hour's  acquaintance  with  this 
cheerful  custom  reconciled  the  pilgrims  to  it,  and 
then  it  ceased  to  occasion  remark.  Thus  easily  do 
even  the  most  startling  novelties  grow  tame  and 
spiritless  to  these  sight-surfeited  wanderers. 

37i 


MARK    TWAIN 

Arrived  at  Old  Cairo,  the  camp-followers  took  up 
the  donkeys  and  tumbled  them  bodily  aboard  a  small 
boat  with  a  lateen  sail,  and  we  followed  and  got 
under  way.  The  deck  was  closely  packed  with 
donkeys  and  men;  the  two  sailors  had  to  climb  over 
and  under  and  through  the  wedged  mass  to  work  the 
sails,  and  the  steersman  had  to  crowd  four  or  five 
donkeys  out  of  the  way  when  he  wished  to  swing  his 
tiller  and  put  his  helm  hard  down.  But  what  were 
their  troubles  to  us  ?  We  had  nothing  to  do ;  nothing 
to  do  but  enjoy  the  trip;  nothing  to  do  but  shove 
the  donkeys  off  our  corns  and  look  at  the  charming 
scenery  of  the  Nile. 

On  the  island  at  our  right  was  the  machine  they 
call  the  Nilometer,  a  stone  column  whose  business  it 
is  to  mark  the  rise  of  the  river  and  prophesy  whether 
it  will  reach  only  thirty-two  feet  and  produce  a 
famine,  or  whether  it  will  properly  flood  the  land  at 
forty  and  produce  plenty,  or  whether  it  will  rise  to 
forty-three  and  bring  death  and  destruction  to  flocks 
and  crops — but  how  it  does  all  this  they  could  not 
explain  to  us  so  that  we  could  understand.  On  the 
same  island  is  still  shown  the  spot  where  Pharaoh's 
daughter  found  Moses  in  the  bulrushes.  Near  the 
spot  we  sailed  from,  the  Holy  Family  dwelt  when 
they  sojourned  in  Egypt  till  Herod  should  complete 
his  slaughter  of  the  innocents.  The  same  tree  they 
rested  under  when  they  first  arrived  was  there  a 
short  time  ago,  but  the  Viceroy  of  Egypt  sent  it  to 
the  Empress  Eugenie  lately.  He  was  just  in  time, 
otherwise  our  pilgrims  would  have  had  it. 

The  Nile  at  this  point  is  muddy,  swift,  and  turbid, 
372 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

and  does  not  lack  a  great  deal  of  being  as  wide  as  the 
Mississippi. 

We  scrambled  up  the  steep  bank  at  the  shabby 
town  of  Ghizeh,  mounted  the  donkeys  again,  and 
scampered  away.  For  four  or  five  miles  the  route 
lay  along  a  high  embankment  which  they  say  is  to 
be  the  bed  of  a  railway  the  Sultan  means  to  build  for 
no  other  reason  than  that  when  the  Empress  of  the 
French  comes  to  visit  him  she  can  go  to  the  Pyra- 
mids in  comfort.  This  is  true  Oriental  hospitality. 
I  am  very  glad  it  is  our  privilege  to  have  donkeys 
instead  of  cars. 

At  the  distance  of  a  few  miles  the  Pyramids,  rising 
above  the  palms,  looked  very  clean-cut,  very  grand 
and  imposing,  and  very  soft  and  filmy,  as  well. 
They  swam  in  a  rich  haze  that  took  from  them  all 
suggestions  of  unfeeling  stone,  and  made  them  seem 
only  the  airy  nothings  of  a  dream — structures  which 
might  blossom  into  tiers  of  vague  arches,  or  ornate 
colonnades,  maybe,  and  change  and  change  again 
into  all  graceful  forms  of  architecture  while  we 
looked,  and  then  melt  deliciously  away  and  blend 
with  the  tremulous  atmosphere. 

At  the  end  of  the  levee  we  left  the  mules  and  went 
in  a  sailboat  across  an  arm  of  the  Nile  or  an  over- 
flow, and  landed  where  the  sands  of  the  Great  Sahara 
left  their  embankment,  as  straight  as  a  wall,  along 
the  verge  of  the  alluvial  plain  of  the  river.  A  labo- 
rious walk  in  the  flaming  sun  brought  us  to  the  foot 
of  the  great  Pyramid  of  Cheops.  It  was  a  fairy 
vision  no  longer.  It  was  a  corrugated,  unsightly 
mountain  of  stone.     Each  of  its  monstrous  sides 

373 


MARK    TWAIN 

was  a  wide  stairway  which  rose  upward,  step  above 
step,  narrowing  as  it  went,  till  it  tapered  to  a  point 
far  aloft  in  the  air.  Insect  men  and  women — pil- 
grims from  the  Quaker  City — were  creeping  about 
its  dizzy  perches,  and  one  little  black  swarm  were 
waving  postage-stamps  from  the  airy  summit — hand- 
kerchiefs will  be  understood. 

Of  course  we  were  besieged  by  a  rabble  of  muscu- 
lar Egyptians  and  Arabs  who  wanted  the  contract 
of  dragging  us  to  the  top — all  tourists  are.  Of  course 
you  could  not  hear  your  own  voice  for  the  din  that 
was  around  you.  Of  course  the  Sheiks  said  they  were 
the  only  responsible  parties ;  that  all  contracts  must 
be  made  with  them,  all  moneys  paid  over  to  them, 
and  none  exacted  from  us  by  any  but  themselves 
alone.  Of  course  they  contracted  that  the  varlets 
who  dragged  us  up  should  not  mention  bucksheesh 
once.  For  such  is  the  usual  routine.  Of  course 
we  contracted  with  them,  paid  them,  were  delivered 
into  the  hands  of  the  draggers,  dragged  up  the 
Pyramids,  and  harried  and  bedeviled  for  buck- 
sheesh from  the  foundation  clear  to  the  summit. 
We  paid  it,  too,  for  we  were  purposely  spread  very 
far  apart  over  the  vast  side  of  the  Pyramid.  There 
was  no  help  near  if  we  called,  and  the  Herculeses 
who  dragged  us  had  a  way  of  asking  sweetly  and 
flatteringly  for  bucksheesh,  which  was  seductive,  and 
of  looking  fierce  and  threatening  to  throw  us  down 
the  precipice,  which  was  persuasive  and  convincing. 

Each  step  being  full  as  high  as  a  dinner-table; 
there  being  very,  very  many  of  the  steps;  an  Arab 
having  hold  of  each  of  our  arms  and  springing  up- 

374 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ward  from  step  to  step  and  snatching  us  with  them, 
forcing  us  to  lift  our  feet  as  high  as  our  breasts  every 
time,  and  do  it  rapidly  and  keep  it  up  till  we  were 
ready  to  faint, — who  shall  say  it  is  not  lively,  exhila- 
rating, lacerating,  muscle-straining,  bone-wrenching, 
and  perfectly  excruciating  and  exhausting  pastime, 
climbing  the  Pyramids  ?  I  beseeched  the  varlets  not 
to  twist  all  my  joints  asunder;  I  iterated,  reiterated, 
even  swore  to  them  that  I  did  not  wish  to  beat  any- 
body to  the  top;  did  all  I  could  to  convince  them 
that  if  I  got  there  the  last  of  all  I  would  feel  blessed 
above  men  and  grateful  to  them  forever;  I  begged 
them,  prayed  them,  pleaded  with  them  to  let  me 
stop  and  rest  a  moment — only  one  little  moment: 
and  they  only  answered  with  some  more  frightful 
springs,  and  an  unenlisted  volunteer  behind  opened 
a  bombardment  of  determined  boosts  with  his  head 
which  threatened  to  batter  my  whole  political  econ- 
omy to  wreck  and  ruin. 

Twice,  for  one  minute,  they  let  me  rest  while  they 
extorted  bucksheesh,  and  then  continued  their  ma- 
niac flight  up  the  Pyramid.  They  wished  to  beat 
the  other  parties.  It  was  nothing  to  them  that  I,  a 
stranger,  must  be  sacrificed  upon  the  altar  of  their 
unholy  ambition.  But  in  the  midst  of  sorrow  joy 
blooms.  Even  in  this  dark  hour  I  had  a  sweet  con- 
solation. For  I  knew  that  except  these  Mohamme- 
dans repented  they  would  go  straight  to  perdition 
some  day.  And  they  never  repent — they  never  forsake 
their  paganism.  This  thought  calmed  me,  cheered 
me,  and  I  sank  down,  limp  and  exhausted,  upon  the 
summit,  but  happy,  so  happy  and  serene  within. 

375 


MARK    TWAIN 

On  the  one  hand,  a  mighty  sea  of  yellow  sand 
stretched  away  toward  the  ends  of  the  earth,  solemn, 
silent,  shorn  of  vegetation,  its  solitude  uncheered  by 
any  forms  of  creature  life;  on  the  other,  the  Eden 
of  Egypt  was  spread  below  us — a  broad  green  floor, 
cloven  by  the  sinuous  river,  dotted  with  villages,  its 
vast  distances  measured  and  marked  by  the  diminish- 
ing stature  of  receding  clusters  of  palms.  It  lay 
asleep  in  an  enchanted  atmosphere.  There  was  no 
sound,  no  motion.  Above  the  date-plumes  in  the 
middle  distance,  swelled  a  domed  and  pinnacled 
mass,  glimmering  through  a  tinted,  exquisite  mist; 
away  toward  the  horizon  a  dozen  shapely  pyramids 
watched  over  ruined  Memphis;  and  at  our  feet  the 
bland  impassible  Sphinx  looked  out  upon  the  picture 
from  her  throne  in  the  sands  as  placidly  and  pen- 
sively as  she  had  looked  upon  its  like  full  fifty 
lagging  centuries  ago. 

We  suffered  torture  no  pen  can  describe  from  the 
hungry  appeals  for  bucksheesh  that  gleamed  from 
Arab  eyes  and  poured  incessantly  from  Arab  lips. 
Why  try  to  call  up  the  traditions  of  vanished 
Egyptian  grandeur;  why  try  to  fancy  Egypt  follow- 
ing dead  Rameses  to  his  tomb  in  the  Pyramid,  or  the 
long  multitude  of  Israel  departing  over  the  desert 
yonder?  Why  try  to  think  at  all?  The  thing  was 
impossible.  One  must  bring  his  meditations  cut  and 
dried,  or  else  cut  and  dry  them  afterward. 

The  traditional  Arab  proposed,  in  the  traditional 
way,  to  run  down  Cheops,  cross  the  eighth  of  a  mile 
of  sand  intervening  between  it  and  the  tall  pyramid 
of  Cephren,  ascend  to  Cephren's  summit  and  return 

376 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

to  us  on  the  top  of  Cheops — all  in  nine  minutes  by 
the  watch,  and  the  whole  service  to  be  rendered  for 
a  single  dollar.  In  the  first  flush  of  irritation,  I  said 
let  the  Arab  and  his  exploits  go  to  the  mischief. 
But  stay.  The  upper  third  of  Cephren  was  coated 
with  dressed  marble,  smooth  as  glass.  A  blessed 
thought  entered  my  brain.  He  must  infallibly  break 
his  neck.  Close  the  contract  with  despatch,  I  said, 
and  let  him  go.  He  started.  We  watched.  He 
went  bounding  down  the  vast  broadside,  spring  after 
spring,  like  an  ibex.  He  grew  small  and  smaller  till 
he  became  a  bobbing  pygmy,  away  down  toward  the 
bottom — then  disappeared.  We  turned  and  peered 
over  the  other  side — forty  seconds — eighty  seconds 
— a  hundred — happiness,  he  is  dead  already? — two 
minutes — and  a  quarter — "There  he  goes!"  Too 
true — it  was  too  true.  He  was  very  small,  now. 
Gradually,  but  surely,  he  overcame  the  level  ground. 
He  began  to  spring  and  climb  again.  Up,  up,  up 
— at  last  he  reached  the  smooth  coating — now  for 
it.  But  he  clung  to  it  with  toes  and  fingers,  like  a 
fly.  He  crawled  this  way  and  that — away  to  the 
right,  slanting  upward — away  to  the  left,  still  slant- 
ing upward — and  stood  at  last,  a  black  peg  on  the 
summit,  and  waved  his  pygmy  scarf!  Then  he  crept 
downward  to  the  raw  steps  again,  then  picked  up  his 
agile  heels  and  flew.  We  lost  him  presently.  But 
presently  again  we  saw  him  under  us,  mounting  with 
undiminished  energy.  Shortly  he  bounded  into  our 
midst  with  a  gallant  war-whoop.  Time,  eight  min- 
utes, forty-one  seconds.  He  had  won.  His  bones 
were  intact.     It  was  a  failure.     I  reflected.     I  said 

377 


MARK    TWAIN 

to  myself,  he  is  tired,  and  must  grow  dizzy.  I  will 
risk  another  dollar  on  him. 

He  started  again.  Made  the  trip  again.  Slipped 
on  the  smooth  coating — I  almost  had  him.  But  an 
infamous  crevice  saved  him.  He  was  with  us  once 
more — perfectly  sound.  Time,  eight  minutes,  forty- 
six  seconds. 

I  said  to  Dan,  ' '  Lend  me  a  dollar — I  can  beat  this 
game,  yet." 

Worse  and  worse.  He  won  again.  Time,  eight 
minutes,  forty-eight  seconds.  I  was  out  of  all 
patience,  now.  I  was  desperate.  Money  was  nG 
longer  of  any  consequence.  I  said,  "  Sirrah,  I  will 
give  you  a  hundred  dollars  to  jump  off  this  pyramid 
head  first.  If  you  do  not  like  the  terms,  name  your 
bet.  I  scorn  to  stand  on  expenses  now.  I  will  stay 
right  here  and  risk  money  on  you  as  long  as  Dan 
has  got  a  cent." 

I  was  in  a  fair  way  to  win,  now,  for  it  was  a  dazzling 
opportunity  for  an  Arab.  He  pondered  a  moment, 
and  would  have  done  it,  I  think,  but  his  mother 
arrived,  then,  and  interfered.  Her  tears  moved  me 
— I  never  can  look  upon  the  tears  of  woman  with 
indifference — and  I  said  I  would  give  her  a  hundred 
to  jump  off,  too. 

But  it  was  a  failure.  The  Arabs  are  too  high- 
priced  in  Egypt.  They  put  on  airs  unbecoming  to 
such  savages. 

We  descended,  hot  and  out  of  humor.  The 
dragoman  lit  candles,  and  we  all  entered  a  hole 
near  the  base  of  the  pyramid,  attended  by  a  crazy 
rabble  of  Arabs  who  thrust  their  services  upon  us 

378 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

uninvited.  They  dragged  us  up  a  long  inclined 
chute,  and  dripped  candle-grease  all  over  us.  This 
chute  was  not  more  than  twice  as  wide  and  high  as  a 
Saratoga  trunk,  and  was  walled,  roofed,  and  floored 
with  solid  blocks  of  Egyptian  granite  as  wide  as  a 
wardrobe,  twice  as  thick,  and  three  times  as  long. 
We  kept  on  climbing,  through  the  oppressive  gloom, 
till  I  thought  we  ought  to  be  nearing  the  top  of  the 
pyramid  again,  and  then  came  to  the  "Queen's 
Chamber,"  and  shortly  to  the  Chamber  of  the  King. 
These  large  apartments  were  tombs.  The  walls  were 
built  of  monstrous  masses  of  smoothed  granite, 
neatly  joined  together.  Some  of  them  were  nearly 
as  large  square  as  an  ordinary  parlor.  A  great  stone 
sarcophagus  like  a  bathtub  stood  in  the  center  of  the 
King's  Chamber.  Around  it  were  gathered  a  pic- 
turesque group  of  Arab  savages  and  soiled  and  tat- 
tered pilgrims,  who  held  their  candles  aloft  in  the 
gloom  while  they  chattered,  arid  the  winking  blurs  of 
light  shed  a  dim  glory  down  upon  one  of  the  irre- 
pressible memento-seekers  who  was  pecking  at  the 
venerable  sarcophagus  with  his  sacrilegious  hammer. 
We  struggled  out  to  the  open  air  and  the  bright  sun- 
shine, and  for  the  space  of  thirty  minutes  received 
ragged  Arabs  by  couples,  dozens,  and  platoons,  and 
paid  them  bucksheesh  for  services  they  swore  and 
proved  by  each  other  that  they  had  rendered,  but 
which  we  had  not  been  aware  of  before — and  as 
each  party  was  paid,  they  dropped  into  the  rear 
of  the  procession  and  in  due  time  arrived  again 
with  a  newly  invented  delinquent  list  for  liquidation. 
We  lunched  in  the  shade  of  the  pyramid,  and  in 
379 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  midst  of  this  encroaching  and  unwelcome  com- 
pany, and  then  Dan  and  Jack  and  I  started  away  for 
a  walk.  A  howling  swarm  of  beggars  followed  us — 
surrounded  us — almost  headed  us  off.  A  sheik,  in 
flowing  white  burnoose  and  gaudy  headgear,  was 
with  them.  He  wanted  more  bucksheesh.  But  we 
had  adopted  a  new  code — it  was  millions  for  de- 
fense, but  not  a  cent  for  bucksheesh.  I  asked  him 
if  he  could  persuade  the  others  to  depart  if  we  paid 
him.  He  said  yes — for  ten  francs.  We  accepted 
the  contract,  and  said — 

"Now  persuade  your  vassals  to  fall  back." 
He  swung  his  long  staff  round  his  head  and  three 
Arabs  bit  the  dust.  He  capered  among  the  mob 
like  a  very  maniac.  His  blows  fell  like  hail,  and 
wherever  one  fell  a  subject  went  down.  We  had  to 
hurry  to  the  rescue  and  tell  him  it  was  only  necessary 
to  damage  them  a  little,  he  need  not  kill  them.  In 
two  minutes  we  were  alone  with  the  sheik,  and  re- 
mained so.  The  persuasive  powers  of  this  illiterate 
savage  were  remarkable. 

Each  side  of  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops  is  about  as 
long  as  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  or  the  Sultan's 
new  palace  on  the  Bosporus,  and  is  longer  than  the 
greatest  depth  of  St.  Peter's  at  Rome — which  is  to 
say  that  each  side  of  Cheops  extends  seven  hundred 
and  some  odd  feet.  It  is  about  seventy-five  feet 
higher  than  the  cross  on  St.  Peter's.  The  first  time 
I  ever  went  down  the  Mississippi,  I  thought  the 
highest  bluff  on  the  river  between  St.  Louis  and  New 
Orleans — it  was  near  Selma,  Missouri — was  prob- 
ably the  highest  mountain  in  the  world.     It  is  four 

380 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

hundred  and  thirteen  feet  high.  It  still  looms  in 
my  memory  with  undiminished  grandeur.  I  can 
still  see  the  trees  and  bushes  growing  smaller  and 
smaller  as  I  followed  them  up  its  huge  slant  with  my 
eye,  till  they  became  a  feathery  fringe  on  the  distant 
summit.  This  symmetrical  Pyramid  of  Cheops — 
this  solid  mountain  of  stone  reared  by  the  patient 
hands  of  men — this  mighty  tomb  of  a  forgotten 
monarch — dwarfs  my  cherished  mountain.  For  it 
is  four  hundred  and  eighty  feet  high.  In  still  earlier 
years  than  those  I  have  been  recalling,  Holliday's 
Hill,  in  our  town,  was  to  me  the  noblest  work  of 
God.  It  appeared  to  pierce  the  skies.  It  was 
nearly  three  hundred  feet  high.  In  those  days  I 
pondered  the  subject  much,  but  I  never  could  un- 
derstand why  it  did  not  swathe  its  summit  with 
never-failing  clouds,  and  crown  its  majestic  brow  with 
everlasting  snows.  I  had  heard  that  such  was  the 
custom  of  great  mountains  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 
I  remembered  how  I  worked  with  another  boy,  at 
odd  afternoons  stolen  from  study  and  paid  for  with 
stripes,  to  undermine  and  start  from  its  bed  an  im- 
mense boulder  that  rested  upon  the  edge  of  that  hill- 
top; I  remembered  how,  one  Saturday  afternoon,  we 
gave  three  hours  of  honest  effort  to  the  task,  and  saw 
at  last  that  our  reward  was  at  hand ;  I  remembered 
how  we  sat  down,  then,  and  wiped  the  perspiration 
away,  and  waited  to  let  a  picnic  party  get  out  of  the 
way  in  the  road  below — and  then  we  started  the 
boulder.  It  was  splendid.  It  went  crashing  down 
the  hillside,  tearing  up  saplings,  mowing  bushes 
down  like  grass,  ripping  and  crushing  and  smashing 

381 


MARK    TWAIN 

everything  in  its  path — eternally  splintered  and  scat- 
tered a  woodpile  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  and  then 
sprang  from  the  high  bank  clear  over  a  dray  in  the 
road — the  negro  glanced  up  once  and  dodged — 
and  the  next  second  it  made  infinitesimal  mincemeat 
of  a  frame  cooper  shop,  and  the  coopers  swarmed 
out  like  bees.  Then  we  said  it  was  perfectly  mag- 
nificent, and  left.  Because  the  coopers  were  start- 
ing up  the  hill  to  inquire. 

Still,  that  mountain,  prodigious  as  it  was,  was 
nothing  to  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops.  I  could  conjure 
up  no  comparison  that  would  convey  to  my  mind  a 
satisfactory  comprehension  of  the  magnitude  of  a 
pile  of  monstrous  stones  that  covered  thirteen  acres 
of  ground  and  stretched  upward  four  hundred  and 
eighty  tiresome  feet,  and  so  I  gave  it  up  and  walked 
down  to  the  Sphinx. 

After  years  of  waiting,  it  was  before  me  at  last. 
The  great  face  was  so  sad,  so  earnest,  so  longing,  so 
patient.  There  was  a  dignity  not  of  earth  in  its 
mien,  and  in  its  countenance  a  benignity  such  as 
never  anything  human  wore.  It  was  stone,  but  it 
seemed  sentient.  If  ever  image  of  stone  thought, 
it  was  thinking.  It  was  looking  toward  the  verge  of 
the  landscape,  yet  looking  at  nothing — nothing  but 
distance  and  vacancy.  It  was  looking  over  and  be- 
yond everything  of  the  present,  and  far  into  the  past. 
It  was  gazing  out  over  the  ocean  of  Time — over 
lines  of  century-waves  which,  further  and  further 
receding,  closed  nearer  and  nearer  together,  and 
blended  at  last  into  one  unbroken  tide,  away  toward 
the  horizon  of  remote  antiquity.     It  was  thinking  of 

382 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

the  wars  of  departed  ages;  of  the  empires  it  had 
seen  created  and  destroyed;  of  the  nations  whose 
birth  it  had  witnessed,  whose  progress  it  had  watched, 
whose  annihilation  it  had  noted;  of  the  joy  and 
sorrow,  the  life  and  death,  the  grandeur  and  decay, 
of  five  thousand  slow  revolving  years.  It  was  the 
type  of  an  attribute  of  man — of  a  faculty  of  his 
heart  and  brain.  It  was  Memory — Retrospec- 
tion— wrought  into  visible,  tangible  form.  All 
who  know  what  pathos  there  is  in  memories  of  days 
that  are  accomplished  and  faces  that  have  vanished 
— albeit  only  a  trifling  score  of  years  gone  by — will 
have  some  appreciation  of  the  pathos  that  dwells  in 
these  grave  eyes  that  look  so  steadfastly  back  upon 
the  things  they  knew  before  History  was  born — be- 
fore Tradition  had  being — things  that  were,  and 
forms  that  moved,  in  a  vague  era  which  even  Poetry 
and  Romance  scarce  know  of — and  passed  one  by 
one  away  and  left  the  stony  dreamer  solitary  in  the 
midst  of  a  strange  new  age,  and  uncomprehended 
scenes. 

The  Sphinx  is  grand  in  its  loneliness;  it  is  impos- 
sible in  its  magnitude ;  it  is  impressive  in  the  mystery 
that  hangs  over  its  story.  And  there  is  that  in  the 
overshadowing  majesty  of  this  eternal  figure  of  stone, 
with  its  accusing  memory  of  the  deeds  of  all  ages, 
which  reveals  to  one  something  of  what  he  shall  feel 
when  he  shall  stand  at  last  in  the  awful  presence  of 
God. 

There  are  some  things  which,  for  the  credit  of 
America,  should  be  left  unsaid,  perhaps;  but  these 
very  things  happen  sometimes  to  be  the  very  things 

383 


MARK    TWAIN 

which,  for  the  real  benefit  of  Americans,  ought  to 
have  prominent  notice.  While  we  stood  looking,  a 
wart,  or  an  excrescence  of  some  kind,  appeared  on 
the  jaw  of  the  Sphinx.  We  heard  the  familiar  clink 
of  a  hammer,  and  understood  the  case  at  once.  One 
of  our  well-meaning  reptiles — I  mean  relic-hunters 
— had  crawled  up  there  and  was  trying  to  break  a 
"specimen"  from  the  face  of  this  the  most  majestic 
creation  the  hand  of  man  has  wrought.  But  the  great 
image  contemplated  the  dead  ages  as  calmly  as  ever, 
unconscious  of  the  small  insect  that  was  fretting  at  its 
jaw.  Egyptian  granite  that  has  defied  the  storms 
and  earthquakes  of  all  time  has  nothing  to  fear  from 
the  tack-hammers  of  ignorant  excursionists — high- 
waymen like  this  specimen.  He  failed  in  his  enter- 
prise. We  sent  a  sheik  to  arrest  him  if  he  had  the 
authority,  or  to  warn  him,  if  he  had  not,  that  by  the 
laws  of  Egypt  the  crime  he  was  attempting  to  commit 
was  punishable  with  imprisonment  or  the  bastinado. 
Then  he  desisted  and  went  away. 

The  Sphinx :  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet  long, 
sixty  feet  high,  and  a  hundred  and  two  feet  around 
the  head,  if  I  remember  rightly — carved  out  of  one 
solid  block  of  stone  harder  than  any  iron.  The 
block  must  have  been  as  large  as  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel  before  the  usual  waste  (by  the  necessities  of 
sculpture)  of  a  fourth  or  a  half  of  the  original  mass 
was  begun.  I  only  set  down  these  figures  and  these 
remarks  to  suggest  the  prodigious  labor  the  carving 
of  it  so  elegantly,  so  symmetrically,  so  faultlessly, 
must  have  cost.  This  species  of  stone  is  so  hard 
that  figures  cut  in  it  remain  sharp  and  unmarred 

384 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

after  exposure  to  the  weather  for  two  or  three  thou- 
sand years.  Now  did  it  take  a  hundred  years  of 
patient  toil  to  carve  the  Sphinx  ?  It  seems  probable. 
Something  interfered,  and  we  did  not  visit  the 
Red  Sea  and  walk  upon  the  sands  of  Arabia.  I 
shall  not  describe  the  great  mosque  of  Mehemet  AH, 
whose  entire  inner  walls  are  built  of  polished  and 
glistening  alabaster;  I  shall  not  tell  how  the  little 
birds  have  built  their  nests  in  the  globes  of  the  great 
chandeliers  that  hang  in  the  mosque,  and  how  they 
fill  the  whole  place  with  their  music  and  are  not 
afraid  of  anybody  because  their  audacity  is  par- 
doned, their  rights  are  respected,  and  nobody  is 
allowed  to  interfere  with  them,  even  though  the 
mosque  be  thus  doomed  to  go  unlighted ;  I  certainly 
shall  not  tell  the  hackneyed  story  of  the  massacre  of 
the  Mamelukes,  because  I  am  glad  the  lawless  rascals 
were  massacred,  and  I  do  not  wish  to  get  up  any 
sympathy  in  their  behalf;  I  shall  not  tell  how  that 
one  solitary  Mameluke  jumped  his  horse  a  hundred 
feet  down  from  the  battlements  of  the  citadel  and 
escaped,  because  I  do  not  think  much  of  that — I 
could  have  done  it  myself;  I  shall  not  teU  of 
Joseph's  well  which  he  dug  in  the  solid  rock  of  the 
citadel  hill  and  which  is  still  as  good  as  new,  nor 
how  the  same  mules  he  bought  to  draw  up  the  water 
(with  an  endless  chain)  are  still  at  it  yet  and  are 
getting  tired  of  it,  too;  I  shall  not  tell  about 
Joseph's  granaries  which  he  built  to  store  the  grain 
in,  what  time  the  Egyptian  brokers  were  "selling 
short,"  unwitting  that  there  would  be  no  corn  in  all 
the  land  when  it  should  be  time  for  them  to  deliver; 

2*< 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  shall  not  tell  anything  about  the  strange,  strange 
city  of  Cairo,  because  it  is  only  a  repetition,  a  good 
deal  intensified  and  exaggerated,  of  the  Oriental 
cities  I  have  already  spoken  of;  I  shall  not  tell  of 
the  Great  Caravan  which  leaves  for  Mecca  every 
year,  for  I  did  not  see  it;  nor  of  the  fashion  the 
people  have  of  prostrating  themselves  and  so  form- 
ing a  long  human  pavement  to  be  ridden  over  by 
the  chief  of  the  expedition  on  its  return,  to  the  end 
that  their  salvation  may  be  thus  secured,  for  I  did 
not  see  that  either ;  I  shall  not  speak  of  the  railway, 
for  it  is  like  any  other  railway! — I  shall  only  say 
that  the  fuel  they  use  for  the  locomotive  is  com- 
posed of  mummies  three  thousand  years  old,  pur- 
chased by  the  ton  or  by  the  graveyard  for  that  pur- 
pose, and  that  sometimes  one  hears  the  profane 
engineer  call  out  pettishly,  "D — n  these  plebeians, 
they  don't  burn  worth  a  cent — pass  out  a  King";1 
I  shall  not  tell  of  the  groups  of  mud  cones  stuck 
like  wasps'  nests  upon  a  thousand  mounds  above 
high-water  mark  the  length  and  breadth  of  Egypt — 
villages  of  the  lower  classes ;  I  shall  not  speak  of  the 
boundless  sweep  of  level  plain,  green  with  luxuriant 
grain,  that  gladdens  the  eye  as  far  as  it  can  pierce 
through  the  soft,  rich  atmosphere  of  Egypt;  I  shall 
not  speak  of  the  vision  of  the  Pyramids  seen  at  a 
distance  of  five  and  twenty  miles,  for  the  picture  is 
too  ethereal  to  be  limned  by  an  uninspired  pen;  I 
shall  not  tell  of  the  crowds  of  dusky  women  who 
flocked  to  the  cars  when  they  stopped  a  moment  at 

1  Stated  to  me  for  a  fact.    I  only  tell  it  as  I  got  it.    I  am  willing 
to  believe  it.    I  can  believe  anything. 

386 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

a  station,  to  sell  us  a  drink  of  water  or  a  rudd>\ 
juicy  pomegranate;  I  shall  not  tell  of  the  motley 
multitudes  and  wild  costumes  that  graced  a  fair  we 
found  in  full  blast  at  another  barbarous  station;  I 
shall  not  tell  how  we  feasted  on  fresh  dates  and  en- 
joyed the  pleasant  landscape  all  through  the  flying 
journey;  nor  how  we  thundered  into  Alexandria,  at 
last,  swarmed  out  of  the  cars,  rowed  aboard  the 
ship,  left  a  comrade  behind  (who  was  to  return  to 
Europe,  thence  home),  raised  the  anchor,  and 
turned  our  bows  homeward  finally  and  forever  from 
the  long  voyage;  nor  how,  as  the  mellow  sun  went 
down  upon  the  oldest  land  on  earth,  Jack  and  Moult 
assembled  in  solemn  state  in  the  smoking-room  and 
mourned  over  the  lost  comrade  the  whofe  night 
long,  and  would  not  be  comforted.  I  shall  not 
speak  a  word  of  any  of  these  things,  or  write  a  line. 
They  shall  be  as  a  sealed  book.  I  do  not  know 
what  a  sealed  book  is,  because  I  never  saw  one,  but 
a  sealed  book  is  the  expression  to  use  in  this  con- 
nection, because  it  is  popular. 

We  were  glad  to  have  seen  the  land  which  was 
the  mother  of  civilization — which  taught  Greece  her 
letters,  and  through  Greece  Rome,  and  through 
Rome  the  world ;  the  land  which  could  have  human- 
ized and  civilized  the  hapless  children  of  Israel,  but 
allowed  them  to  depart  out  of  her  borders  little 
better  than  savages.  We  were  glad  to  have  seen 
that  land  which  had  an  enlightened  religion  with 
future  eternal  rewards  and  punishment  in  it,  while 
even  Israel's  religion  contained  no  promise  of  a 
hereafter.     We  were  glad  to  have  seen  that  land 

387 


MARK    TWAIN 

which  had  glass  three  thousand  years  before  Eng- 
land had  it,  and  could  paint  upon  it  as  none  of  us 
can  paint  now;  that  land  which  knew,  three  thou- 
sand years  ago,  well-nigh  all  of  medicine  and  surgery 
which  science  has  discovered  lately;  which  had  all 
those  curious  surgical  instruments  which  science  has 
invented  recently;  which  had  in  high  excellence  a 
thousand  luxuries  and  necessities  of  an  advanced 
civilization  which  we  have  gradually  contrived  and 
accumulated  in  modern  times  and  claimed  as  things 
that  were  new  under  the  sun ;  that  had  paper  untold 
centuries  before  we  dreamt  of  it — and  waterfalls 
before  our  women  thought  of  them;  that  had  a 
perfect  system  of  common  schools  so  long  before  we 
boasted  of  our  achievements  in  that  direction  that  it 
seems  forever  and  forever  ago;  that  so  embalmed 
the  dead  that  flesh  was  made  almost  immortal — 
which  we  cannot  do ;  that  built  temples  which  mock 
at  destroying  time  and  smile  grimly  upon  our  lauded 
little  prodigies  of  architecture;  that  old  land  that 
knew  all  which  we  know  now,  perchance,  and  more ; 
that  walked  in  the  broad  highway  of  civilization  in 
the  gray  dawn  of  creation,  ages  and  ages  before  we 
were  born;  that  left  the  impress  of  exalted,  culti- 
vated Mind  upon  the  eternal  front  of  the  Sphinx  to 
confound  all  scoffers  who,  when  all  the  other  proofs 
had  passed  away,  might  seek  to  persuade  the  world 
that  imperial  Egypt,  in  the  days  of  her  high  renown, 
had  groped  in  darkness. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

WE  were  at  sea  now,  for  a  very  long  voyage — we 
were  to  pass  through  the  entire  length  of  the 
Levant;  through  the  entire  length  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean proper,  also,  and  then  cross  the  full  width 
of  the  Atlantic — a  voyage  of  several  weeks.  We 
naturally  settled  down  into  a  very  slow,  stay-at-home 
manner  of  life,  and  resolved  to  be  quiet,  exemplary 
people,  and  roam  no  more  for  twenty  or  thirty  days. 
No  more,  at  least,  than  from  stem  to  stern  of  the 
ship.  It  was  a  very  comfortable  prospect,  though, 
for  we  were  tired  and  needed  a  long  rest. 

We  were  all  lazy  and  satisfied,  now,  as  the  meager 
entries  in  my  note-book  (that  sure  index,  to  me,  of 
my  condition)  prove.  What  a  stupid  thing  a  note- 
book gets  to  be  at  sea,  anyway.  Please  observe 
the  style: 

Sunday  —  Services,  as  usual,  at  four  bells.  Services  at 
night,  also.    No  cards. 

Monday  —  Beautiful  day,  but  rained  hard.  The  cattle 
purchased  at  Alexandria  for  beef  ought  to  be  shingled.  Or  else 
fattened.  The  water  stands  in  deep  puddles  in  the  depressions 
forward  of  their  after  shoulders.  Also  here  and  there  all  over 
their  backs.  It  is  well  they  are  not  cows — it  would  soak  in  and 
ruin  the  milk.  The  poor  devil  eagle1  from  Syria  looks  miserable 
and  droopy  in  the  rain  perched  on  the  forward  capstan.    He 

1  Afterward  presented  to  the  Central  Park. 
389 


MARK    TWAIN 

appears  to  have  his  own  opinion  of  a  sea  voyage,  and  if  it  were 
put  into  language  and  the  language  solidified,  it  would  probably 
essentially  dam  the  widest  river  in  the  world. 

Tuesday — Somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  island  of 
Malta.  Cannot  stop  there.  Cholera.  Weather  very  stormy. 
Many  passengers  seasick  and  invisible. 

Wednesday — Weather  still  very  savage.  Storm  blew  two 
land-birds  to  sea,  and  they  came  on  board.  A  hawk  was  blown 
off,  also.  He  circled  round  and  round  the  ship,  wanting  to  light, 
but  afraid  of  the  people.  He  was  so  tired,  though,  that  he  had 
to  light,  at  last,  or  perish.  He  stopped  in  the  foretop,  repeatedly, 
and  was  as  often  blown  away  by  the  wind.  At  last  Harry  caught 
him.  Sea  full  of  flying-fish.  They  rise  in  flocks  of  three  hun- 
dred and  flash  along  above  the  tops  of  the  waves  a  distance  of 
two  or  three  hundred  feet,  then  fall  and  disappear. 

Thursday  —  Anchored  off  Algiers,  Africa.  Beautiful  city, 
beautiful  green  hilly  landscape  behind  it.  Stayed  half  a  day 
and  left.  Not  permitted  to  land,  though  we  showed  a  clean 
bill  of  health.  They  were  afraid  of  Egyptian  plague  and 
cholera. 

Friday — Morning,  dominoes.  Afternoon,  dominoes.  Even- 
ing, promenading  the  deck.     Afterward,  charades. 

Saturday  —  Morning,  dominoes.  Afternoon,  dominoes. 
Evening,  promenading  the  decks.     Afterward,  dominoes. 

Sunday  —  Morning  service,  four  bells.  Evening  service, 
eight  bells.     Monotony  till  midnight. — Whereupon,  dominoes. 

Monday — Morning,  dominoes.  Afternoon,  dominoes.  Even- 
ing, promenading  the  decks.  Afterward,  charades  and  a  lec- 
ture from  Dr.  C.     Dominoes. 

No  date  —  Anchored  off  the  picturesque  city  of  Cagliari, 
Sardinia.  Stayed  till  midnight,  but  not  permitted  to  land  by 
these  infamous  foreigners.  They  smell  inodorously — they  do 
not  wash — they  dare  not  risk  cholera. 

Thursday  —  Anchored  off  the  beautiful  cathedral  city  of 
Malaga,  Spain. — Went  ashore  in  the  captain's  boat — not  ashore, 
either,  for  they  would  not  let  us  land.  Quarantine.  Shipped 
my  newspaper  correspondence,  which  they  took  with  tongs, 
dipped  it  in  sea-water,  clipped  it  full  of  holes,  and  then  fumi- 
gated it  with  villainous  vapors  till  it  smelt  like  a  Spaniard. 
Inquired  about  chances  to  run  the  blockade  and  visit  the  Alham- 

300 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

bra  at  Granada.    Too  risky — they  might  hang  a  body.    Set 
sail — middle  of  afternoon. 

And  so  on,  and  so  on,  and  so  forth,  for  several  days.  Finally, 
anchored  off  Gibraltar,  which  looks  familiar  and  homelike. 

It  reminds  me  of  the  journal  I  opened  with  the 
New  Year,  once,  when  I  was  a  boy  and  a  confiding 
and  a  willing  prey  to  those  impossible  schemes  of 
reform  which  well-meaning  old  maids  and  grand- 
mothers set  for  the  feet  of  unwary  youths  at  that 
season  of  the  year — setting  oversized  tasks  for 
them,  which,  necessarily  failing,  as  infallibly  weaken 
the  boy's  strength  of  will,  diminish  his  confidence  in 
himself,  and  injure  his  chances  of  success  in  life. 
Please  accept  of  an  extract : 

Monday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 
Tuesday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 
Wednesday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 
Thursday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 
Friday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 
Next  Friday — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 
Friday  fortnight — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 
Following  month — Got  up,  washed,  went  to  bed. 

I  stopped,  then,  discouraged.  Startling  events 
appeared  to  be  too  rare,  in  my  career,  to  render  a 
diary  necessary.  I  still  reflect  with  pride,  however, 
that  even  at  that  early  age  I  washed  when  I  got  up. 
That  journal  finished  me.  I  never  have  had  the 
nerve  to  keep  one  since.  My  loss  of  confidence  in 
myself  in  that  line  was  permanent. 

The  ship  had  to  stay  a  week  or  more  at  Gibraltar 
to  take  in  coal  for  the  home  voyage. 

It  would  be  very  tiresome  staying  here,  and  so 
39i 


MARK    TWAIN 

four  of  us  ran  the  quarantine  blockade  and  spent 
seven  delightful  days  in  Seville,  Cordova,  Cadiz,  and 
wandering  through  the  pleasant  rural  scenery  of 
Andalusia,  the  garden  of  Old  Spain.  The  experi- 
ences of  that  cheery  week  were  too  varied  and 
numerous  for  a  short  chapter,  and  I  have  not  room 
for  a  long  one.  Therefore  I  shall  leave  them  all 
out. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

TEN  or  eleven  o'clock  found  us  coming  down  tc 
breakfast  one  morning  in  Cadiz.  They  told 
us  the  ship  had  been  lying  at  anchor  in  the  harbor 
two  or  three  hours.  It  was  time  for  us  to  bestir 
ourselves.  The  ship  could  wait  only  a  little  while 
because  of  the  quarantine.  We  were  soon  on  board, 
and  within  the  hour  the  white  city  and  the  pleasant 
shores  of  Spain  sank  down  behind  the  waves  and 
passed  out  of  sight.  We  had  seen  no  land  fade 
from  view  so  regretfully. 

It  had  long  ago  been  decided  in  a  noisy  public 
meeting  in  the  main  cabin  that  we  could  not  go  to 
Lisbon,  because  we  must  surely  be  quarantined  there. 
We  did  everything  by  mass-meeting,  in  the  good  old 
national  way,  from  swapping  off  one  empire  for 
another  on  the  program  of  the  voyage  down  to 
complaining  of  the  cookery  and  the  scarcity  of 
napkins.  I  am  reminded,  now,  of  one  of  these 
complaints  of  the  cookery  made  by  a  passenger. 
The  coffee  had  been  steadily  growing  more  and  more 
2xecrable  for  the  space  of  three  weeks,  till  at  last  it 
had  ceased  to  be  coffee  altogether  and  had  assumed 
the  nature  of  mere  discolored  water — so  this  person 
said.  He  said  it  was  so  weak  that  it  was  transparent 
an  inch  in  depth  around  the  edge  of  the  cup.     As 

393 


MARK    TWAIN 

he  approached  the  table  one  morning  he  saw  the 
transparent  edge — by  means  of  his  extraordinary 
vision — long  before  he  got  to  his  seat.  He  went 
back  and  complained  in  a  high-handed  way  to  Cap- 
tain Duncan.  He  said  the  coffee  was  disgraceful. 
The  captain  showed  his.  It  seemed  tolerably  good. 
The  incipient  mutineer  was  more  outraged  than 
ever,  then,  at  what  he  denounced  as  the  partiality 
shown  the  captain's  table  over  the  other  tables  in 
the  ship.  He  flourished  back  and  got  his  cup  and 
set  it  down  triumphantly,  and  said : 

"Just  try  that  mixture  once,  Captain  Duncan." 

He  smelt  it — tasted  it — smiled  benignantly — then 
said: 

"It  is  inferior — for  coffee — but  it  is  pretty  fair 
tear 

The  humbled  mutineer  smelt  it,  tasted  it,  and 
returned  to  his  seat.  He  had  made  an  egregious  ass 
of  himself  before  the  whole  ship.  He  did  it  no 
more.  After  that  he  took  things  as  they  came. 
That  was  me. 

The  old-fashioned  ship-life  had  returned,  now  that 
we  were  no  longer  in  sight  of  land.  For  days  and 
days  it  continued  just  the  same,  one  day  being  exactly 
like  another,  and,  to  me,  every  one  of  them  pleasant. 
At  last  we  anchored  in  the  open  roadstead  of  Fun- 
chal,  in  the  beautiful  islands  we  call  the  Madeiras. 

The  mountains  looked  surpassingly  lovely,  clad  as 
they  were  in  living  green;  ribbed  with  lava  ridges; 
flecked  with  white  cottages;  riven  by  deep  chasms 
purple  with  shade;  the  great  slopes  dashed  with 
sunshine  and  mottled  with  shadows  flung  from  the 

394 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

drifting  squadrons  of  the  sky,  and  the  superb  pic- 
ture fitly  crowned  by  towering  peaks  whose  fronts 
were  swept  by  the  trailing  fringes  of  the  clouds. 

But  we  could  not  land.  We  stayed  all  day  and 
looked,  we  abused  the  man  who  invented  quarantine, 
we  held  half  a  dozen  mass-meetings  and  crammed 
them  full  of  interrupted  speeches,  motions  that  fell 
still-born,  amendments  that  came  to  naught,  and 
resolutions  that  died  from  sheer  exhaustion  in  trying 
to  get  before  the  house.     At  night  we  set  sail. 

We  averaged  four  mass-meetings  a  week  for  the 
voyage — we  seemed  always  in  labor  in  this  way, 
and  yet  so  often  fallaciously  that  whenever  at  long 
intervals  we  were  safely  delivered  of  a  resolution,  it 
was  cause  for  public  rejoicing,  and  we  hoisted  the 
flag  and  fired  a  salute. 

Days  passed — and  nights;  and  then  the  beautiful 
Bermudas  rose  out  of  the  sea,  we  entered  the  tortu- 
ous channel,  steamed  hither  and  thither  among  the 
bright  summer  islands,  and  rested  at  last  under  the 
flag  of  England  and  were  welcome.  We  were  not  a 
nightmare  here,  where  were  civilization  and  intelli- 
gence in  place  of  Spanish  and  Italian  superstition, 
dirt  and  dread  of  cholera.  A  few  days  among  the 
breezy  groves,  the  flower-gardens,  the  coral  caves, 
and  the  lovely  vistas  of  blue  water  that  went. curving 
in  and  out,  disappearing  and  anon  again  appearing 
through  jungle  walls  of  brilliant  foliage,  restored  the 
energies  dulled  by  long  drowsing  on  the  ocean,  and 
fitted  us  for  our  final  cruise — our  little  run  of  a 
thousand  miles  to  New  York — America — home. 

We  bade  good-by  to  "our  friends  the  Bermu- 
395 


MARK    TWAIN 

dians,"  as  our  program  hath  it  —  the  majority  of 
those  we  were  most  intimate  with  were  negroes — 
and  courted  the  great  deep  again.  I  said  the 
majority.  We  knew  more  negroes  than  white  peo- 
ple, because  we  had  a  deal  of  washing  to  be  done, 
but  we  made  some  most  excellent  friends  among  the 
whites,  whom  it  will  be  a  pleasant  duty  to  hold  long 
in  grateful  remembrance. 

We  sailed,  and  from  that  hour  all  idling  ceased. 
Such  another  system  of  overhauling,  general  litter- 
ing of  cabins  and  packing  of  trunks  we  had  not  seen 
since  we  let  go  the  anchor  in  the  harbor  of  Beirout. 
Everybody  was  busy.  Lists  of  all  purchases  had  to 
be  made  out,  and  values  attached,  to  facilitate  mat- 
ters at  the  custom-house.  Purchases  bought  by 
bulk  in  partnership  had  to  be  equitably  divided,  out- 
standing debts  canceled,  accounts  compared,  and 
trunks,  boxes,  and  packages  labeled.  All  day  long 
the  bustle  and  confusion  continued. 

And  now  came  our  first  accident.  A  passenger 
was  running  through  a  gangway,  betweendecks,  one 
stormy  night,  when  he  caught  his  foot  in  the  iron 
staple  of  a  door  that  had  been  heedlessly  left  off 
a  hatchway  and  the  bones  of  his  leg  broke  at  the 
ankle.  It  was  our  first  serious  misfortune.  We 
had  traveled  much  more  than  twenty  thousand 
miles,  by  land  and  sea,  in  many  trying  climates, 
without  a  single  hurt,  without  a  serious  case  of  sick- 
ness, and  without  a  death  among  five-and-sixty  pas- 
sengers. Our  good  fortune  had  been  wonderful. 
A  sailor  had  jumped  overboard  at  Constantinople 
one  night,  and  was  seen  no  more,  but  it  was  sus* 

396 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

pected  that  his  object  was  to  desert,  and  there  was 
a  slim  chance,  at  least,  that  he  reached  the  shore. 
But  the  passenger-list  was  complete.  There  was  no 
name  missing  from  the  register. 

At  last,  one  pleasant  morning,  we  steamed  up 
the  harbor  of  New  York,  all  on  deck,  all  dressed  in 
Christian  garb — by  special  order,  for  there  was  a 
latent  disposition  in  some  quarters  to  come  out  as 
Turks — and,  amid  a  waving  of  handkerchiefs  from 
welcoming  friends,  the  glad  pilgrims  noted  the 
shiver  of  the  decks  that  told  that  ship  and  pier  had 
joined  hands  again,  and  the  long,  strange  cruise  was 
over.    Amen. 


A  NEWSPAPER  VALEDICTORY 

IN  this  place  I  will  print  an  article  which  I  wrote 
for  the  New  York  Herald  the  night  we  arrived. 
I  do  it  partly  because  my  contract  with  my  publisher 
makes  it  compulsory;  partly  because  it  is  a  proper, 
tolerably  accurate,  and  exhaustive  summing-up  of 
the  cruise  of  the  ship  and  the  performances  of  the 
pilgrims  in  foreign  lands;  and  partly  because  some 
of  the  passengers  have  abused  me  for  writing  it, 
and  I  wish  the  public  to  see  how  thankless  a  task 
it  is  to  put  one's  self  to  trouble  to  glorify  unappre- 
ciative  people.  I  was  charged  with  "rushing  into 
print"  with  these  compliments.  I  did  not  rush.  I 
had  written  news  letters  to  the  Herald  sometimes, 
but  yet  when  I  visited  the  office  that  day  I  did  not 
say  anything  about  writing  a  valedictory.  I  did  go 
to  the  Tribune  office  to  see  if  such  an  article  was 
wanted,  because  I  belonged  on  the  regular  staff  of 
that  paper  and  it  was  simply  a  duty  to  do  it.  The 
managing  editor  was  absent,  and  so  I  thought  no 
more  about  it.  At  night  when  the  Herald's  request 
came  for  an  article,  I  did  not  "rush."  In  fact,  I 
demurred  for  a  while,  because  I  did  not  feel  like 
writing  compliments,  then,  and  therefore  was  afraid 
to  speak  of  the  cruise  lest  I  might  be  betrayed  into 
using  other  than  complimentary  language.     How- 

398 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

ever,  I  reflected  that  it  would  be  a  just  and  righteous 
thing  to  go  down  and  write  a  kind  word  for  the 
Hadjis — Hadjis  are  people  who  have  made  the  pil- 
grimage— because  parties  not  interested  could  not 
do  it  so  feelingly  as  I,  a  fellow-Hadji,  and  so  I 
penned  the  valedictory.  I  have  read  it,  and  read  it 
again;  and  if  there  is  a  sentence  in  it  that  is  not 
fulsomely  complimentary  to  captain,  ship,  and  pas- 
sengers, /  cannot  find  it.  If  it  is  not  a  chapter  that 
any  company  might  be  proud  to  have  a  body  write 
about  them,  my  judgment  is  fit  for  nothing.  With 
these  remarks  I  confidently  submit  it  to  the  un- 
prejudiced judgment  of  the  reader: 

RETURN  OF  THE  HOLY  LAND  EXCURSIONISTS— THE 
STORY  OF  THE  CRUISE 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Herald: 

The  steamer  Quaker  City  has  accomplished  at  last  her  extra- 
ordinary voyage  and  returned  to  her  old  pier  at  the  foot  of  Wall 
Street.  The  expedition  was  a  success  in  some  respects,  in  some 
it  was  not.  Originally  it  was  advertised  as  a  "pleasure  excur- 
sion." Well,  perhaps  it  was  a  pleasure  excursion,  but  certainly 
it  did  not  look  like  one;  certainly  it  did  not  act  like  one.  Any- 
body's and  everybody's  notion  of  a  pleasure  excursion  is  that 
the  parties  to  it  will  of  a  necessity  be  young  and  giddy  and  some- 
what boisterous.  They  will  dance  a  good  deal,  sing  a  good 
deal,  make  love,  but  sermonize  very  little.  Anybody's  and 
everybody's  notion  of  a  well-conducted  funeral  is  that  there 
must  be  a  hearse  and  a  corpse,  and  chief  mourners  and  mourners 
by  courtesy,  many  old  people,  much  solemnity,  no  levity,  and 
a  prayer  and  a  sermon  withal.  Three-fourths  of  the  Quaker 
City's  passengers  were  between  forty  and  seventy  years  of  age! 
There  was  a  picnic  crowd  for  you!  It  may  be  supposed  that 
the  other  fourth  was  composed  of  young  girls.  But  it  was  not. 
It  was  chiefly  composed  of  rusty  old  bachelors  and  a  child  of 
six  years.     Let  us  average  the  ages  of  the  Quaker  City's  pilgrims 

399 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  set  the  figure  down  as  fifty  years.  Is  any  man  insane 
enough  to  imagine  that  this  picnic  of  patriarchs  sang,  made 
love,  danced,  laughed,  told  anecdotes,  dealt  in  ungodly  levity? 
In  my  experience  they  sinned  little  in  these  matters.  No  doubt 
it  was  presumed  here  at  home  that  these  frolicsome  veterans 
laughed  and  sang  and  romped  all  day,  and  day  after  day,  and 
kept  up  a  noisy  excitement  from  one  end  of  the  ship  to  the  other; 
and  that  they  played  blindman's  buff  or  danced  quadrilles  and 
waltzes  on  moonlight  evenings  on  the  quarter-deck;  and  that 
at  odd  moments  of  unoccupied  time  they  jotted  a  laconic  item 
or  two  in  the  journals  they  opened  on  such  an  elaborate  plan 
when  they  left  home,  and  then  scurried  off  to  their  whist  and 
euchre  labors  under  the  cabin  lamps.  If  these  things  were 
presumed,  the  presumption  was  at  fault.  The  venerable  ex- 
cursionists were  not  gay  and  frisky.  They  played  no  blind- 
man's  buff;  they  dealt  not  in  whist;  they  shirked  not  the  irk- 
some journal,  for  alas!  most  of  them  were  even  writing  books. 
They  never  romped,  they  talked  but  little,  they  never  sang, 
save  in  the  nightly  prayer-meeting.  The  pleasure  ship  was 
a  synagogue,  and  the  pleasure  trip  was  a  funeral  excursion 
without  a  corpse.  (There  is  nothing  exhilarating  about  a  funeral 
excursion  without  a  corpse.)  A  free,  hearty  laugh  was  a  sound 
that  was  not  heard  oftener  than  once  in  seven  days  about  those 
decks  or  in  those  cabins,  and  when  it  was  heard  it  met  with 
precious  little  sympathy.  The  excursionists  danced,  on  three 
separate  evenings,  long,  long  ago  (it  seems  an  age)  quadrilles, 
of  a  single  set,  made  up  of  three  ladies  and  five  gentlemen 
(the  latter  with  handkerchiefs  around  their  arms  to  signify 
their  sex),  who  timed  their  feet  to  the  solemn  wheezing  of  a 
melodeon;  but  even  this  melancholy  orgie  was  voted  to  be  sin- 
ful, and  dancing  was  discontinued. 

The  pilgrims  played  dominoes  when  too  much  Josephus  or 
Robinson's  Holy  Land  Researches,  or  book-writing,  made 
recreation  necessary — for  dominoes  is  about  as  mild  and  sinless 
a  game  as  any  in  the  world,  perhaps,  excepting  always  the 
ineffably  insipid  diversion  they  call  croquet,  which  is  a  game 
where  you  don't  pocket  any  balls  and  don't  carom  on  any 
thing  of  any  consequence,  and  when  you  are  done  nobody  has 
to  pay,  and  there  are  no  refreshments  to  saw  off,  and,  conse- 
quently, there  isn't  any  satisfaction  whatever  about  it — they 

400 


THE    INNOCENTS   ABROAD 

played  dominoes  till  they  were  rested,  and  then  they  black- 
guarded each  other  privately  till  prayer-time.  When  they  were 
not  seasick  they  were  uncommonly  prompt  when  the  dinner- 
gong  sounded.  Such  was  our  daily  life  on  board  the  ship — 
solemnity,  decorum,  dinner,  dominoes,  devotions,  slander.  It 
was  not  lively  enough  for  a  pleasure  trip;  but  if  we  had  only  had 
a  corpse  it  would  have  made  a  noble  funeral  excursion.  It  is 
all  over  now;  but  when  I  look  back,  the  idea  of  these  venerable 
fossils  skipping  forth  on  a  six -months  picnic  seems  exquisitely 
refreshing.  The  advertised  title  of  the  expedition — "The 
Grand  Holy  Land  Pleasure  Excursion" — was  a  misnomer. 
"The  Grand  Holy  Land  Funeral  Procession"  would  have  been 
better — much  better. 

Wherever  we  went,  in  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa,  we  made  a 
sensation,  and,  I  suppose  I  may  add,  created  a  famine.  None 
of  us  had  ever  been  anywhere  before;  we  all  hailed  from  the  in- 
terior; travel  was  a  wild  novelty  to  us,  and  we  conducted  our- 
selves in  accordance  with  the  natural  instincts  that  were  in  us, 
and  trammeled  ourselves  with  no  ceremonies,  no  convention- 
alities. We  always  took  care  to  make  it  understood  that  we  were 
Americans — Americans!  When  we  found  that  a  good  many  for- 
eigners had  hardly  ever  heard  of  America,  and  that  a  good  many 
more  knew  it  only  as  a  barbarous  province  away  off 'somewhere, 
that  had  lately  been  at  war  with  somebody,  we  pitied  the  ignorance 
of  the  Old  World,  but  abated  no  jot  of  our  importance.  Many 
and  many  a  simple  community  in  the  Eastern  hemisphere  will 
remember  for  years  the  incursion  of  the  strange  horde  in  the 
year  of  our  Lord  1867,  that  called  themselves  Americans,  and 
seemed  to  imagine  in  some  unaccountable  way  that  they  had 
a  right  to  be  proud  of  it.  We  generally  created  a  famine,  partly 
because  the  coffee  on  the  Quaker  City  was  unendurable,  and 
sometimes  the  more  substantial  fare  was  not  strictly  first  class; 
and  partly  because  one  naturally  tires  of  sitting  long  at  the 
same  board  and  eating  from  the  same  dishes. 

The  people  of  those  foreign  countries  are  very,  very  ignorant. 
They  looked  curiously  at  the  costumes  we  had  brought  from 
the  wilds  of  America.  They  observed  tfhat  we  talked  loudly 
at  table  sometimes.  They  noticed  that  we  looked  out  for 
expenses,  and  got  what  we  conveniently  could  out  of  a  franc, 
and  wondered  where  in  the  miscnief  we  came  from.    In  Paris 

401 


MARK    TWAIN 

they  just  simply  opened  their  eyes  and  stared  when  we  spoke 
to  them  in  French!  We  never  did  succeed  in  making  those 
'diots  understand  their  own  language.  One  of  our  passengers 
said  to  a  shopkeeper,  in  reference  to  a  proposed  return  to  buy 
a  pair  of  gloves,  "  Allong  restay  trankeel — maybe  ve  coom  Moon- 
day";  and  would  you  believe  it,  that  shopkeeper,  a  born  French- 
man, had  to  ask  what  it  was  that  had  been  said.  Sometimes  it 
seems  to  me,  somehow,  that  there  must  be  a  difference  between 
Parisian  French  and  Quaker  City  French. 

The  people  stared  at  us  everywhere,  and  we  stared  at  them. 
We  generally  made  them  feel  rather  small,  too,  before  we  got 
done  with  them,  because  we  bore  down  on  them  with  America's 
greatness  until  we  crushed  them.  And  yet  we  took  kindly  to 
the  manners  and  customs,  and  especially  to  the  fashions  of  the 
various  people  we  visited.  When  we  left  the  Azores,  we  wore 
awful  capotes  and  used  fine-tooth  combs — successfully.  When 
we  came  back  from  Tangier,  in  Africa,  we  were  topped  with  fezzes 
of  the  bloodiest  hue,  hung  with  tassels  like  an  Indian's  scalp- 
lock.  In  France  and  Spain  we  attracted  some  attention  in 
these  costumes.  In  Italy  they  naturally  took  us  for  distempered 
Garibaldians,  and  set  a  gunboat  to  look  for  anything  significant 
in  our  changes  of  uniform.  We  made  Rome  howl.  We  could 
have  made  any  place  howl  when  we  had  all  our  clothes  on.  We 
got  no  fresh  raiment  in  Greece — they  had  but  little  there  of  any 
kind.  But  at  Constantinople,  how  we  turned  out!  Turbans, 
simitars,  fezzes,  horse  -  pistols,  tunics,  sashes,  baggy  trousers, 
yellow  slippers — Oh,  we  were  gorgeous!  The  illustrious  dogs 
of  Constantinople  barked  their  under- jaws  off,  and  even  then 
failed  to  do  us  justice.  They  are  all  dead  by  this  time.  They 
could  not  go  through  such  a  run  of  business  as  we  gave  them 
and  survive. 

And  then  we  went  to  see  the  Emperor  of  Russia.  We  just 
called  on  him  as  comfortably  as  if  we  had  known  him  a  century 
or  so.  and  when  we  had  finished  our  visit  we  variegated  ourselves 
with  selections  from  Russian  costumes  and  sailed  away  again 
more  picturesque  than  ever.  In  Smyrna  we  picked  up  camel's- 
hair  shawls  and  other  dressy  things  from  Persia;  but  in  Pales- 
tine— ah,  in  Palestine — our  splendid  career  ended.  They  didn't 
wear  any  clothes  there  to  speak  of.  We  were  satisfied,  and 
stopped.    We  made  no  experiments.    We  did  not  try  their 

402 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

costume.  But  we  astonished  the  natives  of  that  country.  We 
astonished  them  with  such  eccentricities  of  dress  as  we  could 
muster.  We  prowled  through  the  Holy  Land,  from  Cesarea 
Philippi  to  Jerusalem  and  the  Dead  Sea,  a  weird  procession  of 
pilgrims,  gotten  up  regardless  of  expense,  solemn,  gorgeous, 
green-spectacled,  drowsing  under  blue  umbrellas,  and  astride 
of  a  sorrier  lot  of  horses,  camels,  and  asses  than  those  that 
came  out  of  Noah's  ark,  after  eleven  months  of  seasickness  and 
short  rations.  If  ever  those  children  of  Israel  in  Palestine  forget 
when  Gideon's  Band  went  through  there  from  America,  they 
ought  to  be  cursed  once  more  and  finished.  It  was  the  rarest 
spectacle  that  ever  astounded  mortal  eyes,  perhaps. 

Well,  we  were  at  home  in  Palestine.  It  was  easy  to  see  that 
that  was  the  grand  feature  of  the  expedition.  We  had  cared 
nothing  much  about  Europe.  We  galloped  through  the  Louvre, 
the  Pitti,  the  Uffizzi,  the  Vatican — all  the  galleries — and  through 
the  pictured  and  frescoed  churches  of  Venice,  Naples,  and  the 
cathedrals  of  Spain;  some  of  us  said  that  certain  of  the  great 
works  of  the  old  masters  were  glorious  creations  of  genius  (we 
found  it  out  in  the  guide-book,  though  we  got  hold  of  the  wrong 
picture  sometimes),  and  the  others  said  they  were  disgraceful 
old  daubs.  We  examined  modern  and  ancient  statuary  with  a 
critical  eye  in  Florence,  Rome,  or  anywhere  we  found  it,  and 
praised  it  if  we  saw  fit,  and  if  we  didn't  we  said  we  preferred 
the  wooden  Indians  in  front  of  the  cigar  stores  of  America. 
But  the  Holy  Land  brought  out  all  our  enthusiasm.  We  fell 
into  raptures  by  the  barren  shores  of  Galilee;  we  pondered  at 
Tabor  and  at  Nazareth;  we  exploded  into  poetry  over  the 
questionable  loveliness  of  Esdraelon;  we  meditated  at  Jezreel 
and  Samaria  over  the  missionary  zeal  of  Jehu;  we  rioted — 
fairly  rioted  among  the  holy  places  of  Jerusalem;  we  bathed  in 
Jordan  and  the  Dead  Sea,  reckless  whether  our  accident-in- 
surance policies  were  extra-hazardous  or  not,  and  brought  away 
so  many  jugs  of  precious  water  from  both  places  that  all  the 
country  from  Jericho  to  the  mountains  of  Moab  will  suffer 
from  drought  this  year,  I  think.  Yet,  the  pilgrimage  part  of 
the  excursion  was  its  pet  feature — there  is  no  question  about 
that.  After  dismal,  smileless  Palestine,  beautiful  Egypt  had 
few  charms  for  us.  We  merely  glanced  at  it  and  were  ready 
for  home. 

403 


MARK    TWAIN 

They  wouldn't  let  us  land  at  Malta — quarantine;  they  would 
not  let  us  land  in  Sardinia;  nor  at  Algiers,  Africa;  nor  at  Malaga, 
Spain,  nor  Cadiz,  nor  at  the  Madeira  Islands.  So  we  got  of- 
fended at  all  foreigners  and  turned  our  backs  upon  them  and 
came  home.  I  suppose  we  only  stopped  at  the  Bermudas  be- 
cause they  were  in  the  program.  We  did  not  care  anything 
about  any  place  at  all.  We  wanted  to  go  home.  Homesickness 
was  abroad  in  the  ship — it  was  epidemic.  If  the  authorities 
of  New  York  had  known  how  badly  we  had  it,  they  would  have 
quarantined  us  here. 

The  grand  pilgrimage  is  over.  Good-by  to  it,  and  a  pleasant 
memory  to  it,  I  am  able  to  say  in  all  kindness.  I  bear  no  malice, 
no  ill  will  toward  any  individual  that  was  connected  with  it, 
either  as  passenger  or  officer.  Things  I  did  not  like  at  all  yes- 
terday I  like  very  well  to-day,  now  that  I  am  home,  and  always 
hereafter  I  shall  be  able  to  poke  fun  at  the  whole  gang  if  the 
spirit  so  moves  me  to  do,  without  ever  saying  a  malicious  word. 
The  expedition  accomplished  all  that  its  program  promised 
that  it  should  accomplish,  and  we  ought  all  to  be  satisfied  with 
the  management  of  the  matter,  certainly.    By-by! 

Mark  Twain. 

I  call  that  complimentary.  It  is  complimentary; 
and  yet  I  never  have  received  a  word  of  thanks  for 
it  from  the  Hadjis ;  on  the  contrary,  I  speak  nothing 
but  the  serious  truth  when  I  say  that  many  of  them 
even  took  exceptions  to  the  article.  In  endeavoring 
to  please  them  I  slaved  over  that  sketch  for  two 
hours,  and  had  my  labor  for  my  pains.  I  never 
will  do  a  generous  deed  again. 


CONCLUSION 

NEARLY  one  year  has  flown  since  this  notable 
pilgrimage  was  ended;  and  as  I  sit  here  at 
home  in  San  Francisco  thinking,  I  am  moved  to 
confess  that  day  by  day  the  mass  of  my  memories 
of  the  excursion  have  grown  more  and  more  pleasant 
as  the  disagreeable  incidents  of  travel  which  encum- 
bered them  flitted  one  by  one  out  of  my  mind — 
and  now,  if  the  Quaker  City  were  weighing  her 
anchor  to  sail  away  on  the  very  same  cruise  again, 
nothing  could  gratify  me  more  than  to  be  a  passenger. 
With  the  same  captain  and  even  the  same  pilgrims, 
the  same  sinners.  I  was  on  excellent  terms  with 
eight  or  nine  of  the  excursionists  (they  are  my 
stanch  friends  yet),  and  was  even  on  speaking  terms 
with  the  rest  of  the  sixty-five.  I  have  been  at  sea 
quite  enough  to  know  that  that  was  a  very  good 
average.  Because  a  long  sea- voyage  not  only  brings 
out  all  the  mean  traits  one  has,  and  exaggerates 
them,  but  raises  up  others  which  he  never  suspected 
he  possessed,  and  even  creates  new  ones.  A  twelve 
months'  voyage  at  sea  would  make  an  ordinary  man 
a  very  miracle  of  meanness.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
a  man  has  good  qualities,  the  spirit  seldom  moves 
him  to  exhibit  them  on  shipboard,  at  least  with  any 
sort  of  emphasis.     Now  I   am  satisfied   that  our 

405 


MARK    TWAIN 

pilgrims  are  pleasant  old  people  on  shore;  I  am 
also  satisfied  that  at  sea  on  a  second  voyage  they 
would  be  pleasanter,  somewhat,  than  they  were  on 
our  grand  excursion,  and  so  I  say  without  hesitation 
that  I  would  be  glad  enough  to  sail  with  them 
again.  I  could  at  least  enjoy  life  with  my  handful 
of  old  friends.  They  could  enjoy  life  with  their 
cliques  as  well — passengers  invariably  divide  up  into 
cliques,  on  all  ships. 

And  I  will  say,  here,  that  I  would  rather  travel 
with  an  excursion  party  of  Methuselahs  than  have  to 
be  changing  ships  and  comrades  constantly,  as  peo- 
ple do  who  travel  in  the  ordinary  way.  Those 
latter  are  always  grieving  over  some  other  ship  they 
have  known  and  lost,  and  over  other  comrades  whom 
diverging  routes  have  separated  from  them.  They 
learn  to  love  a  ship  just  in  time  to  change  it  for 
another,  and  they  become  attached  to  a  pleasant 
traveling-companion  only  to  lose  him.  They  have 
that  most  dismal  experience  of  being  in  a  strange 
vessel,  among  strange  people  who  care  nothing 
about  them,  and  of  undergoing  the  customary  bully- 
ing by  strange  officers  and  the  insolence  of  strange 
servants,  repeated  over  and  over  again  within  the 
compass  of  every  month.  They  have  also  that 
other  misery  of  packing  and  unpacking  trunks — of 
running  the  distressing  gantlet  of  custom-houses — 
of  the  anxieties  attendant  upon  getting  a  mass  of 
baggage  from  point  to  point  on  land  in  safety.  I 
had  rather  sail  with  a  whole  brigade  of  patriarchs 
than  suffer  so.  We  never  packed  our  trunks  but 
twice — when  we  sailed  from  New  ¥ork,  and  when 

406 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

we  returned  to  it.  Whenever  we  made  a  land  jour- 
ney, we  estimated  how  many  days  we  should  be 
gone  and  what  amount  of  clothing  we  should  need, 
figured  it  down  to  a  mathematical  nicety,  packed  a 
valise  or  two  accordingly,  and  left  the  trunks  on 
board.  We  chose  our  comrades  from  among  our 
old,  tried  friends,  and  started.  We  were  never 
dependent  upon  strangers  for  companionship.  We 
often  had  occasion  to  pity  Americans  whom  we 
found  traveling  drearily  among  strangers  with  no 
friends  to  exchange  pains  and  pleasures  with. 
Whenever  we  were  coming  back  from  a  land  jour- 
ney, our  eyes  sought  one  thing  in  the  distance  first 
■ — the  ship — and  when  we  saw  it  riding  at  anchor 
with  the  flag  apeak,  we  felt  as  a  returning  wanderer 
feels  when  he  sees  his  home.  When  we  stepped  on 
board,  our  cares  vanished,  our  troubles  were  at  an 
end — for  the  ship  was  home  to  us.  We  always  had 
the  same  familiar  old  stateroom  to  go  to,  and  feel 
safe  and  at  peace  and  comfortable  again. 

I  have  no  fault  to  find  with  the  manner  in  which 
our  excursion  was  conducted.  Its  program  was 
faithfully  carried  out — a  thing  which  surprised  me, 
for  great  enterprises  usually  promise  vastly  more 
than  they  perform.  It  would  be  well  if  such  an 
excursion  could  be  gotten  up  every  year  and  the 
system  regularly  inaugurated.  Travel  is  fatal  to 
prejudice,  bigotry,  and  narrow  -  mindedness,  and 
many  of  our  people  need  it  sorely  on  these  accounts. 
Broad,  wholesome,  charitable  views  of  men  and 
things  cannot  be  acquired  by  vegetating  in  one 
little  corner  of  the  earth  all  one's  lifetime. 

407 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  excursion  is  ended,  and  has  passed  to  its 
place  among  the  things  that  were.  But  its  varied 
scenes  and  its  manifold  incidents  will  linger  pleas- 
antly in  our  memories  for  many  a  year  to  come. 
Always  on  the  wing,  as  we  were,  and  merely  pausing 
a  moment  to  catch  fitful  glimpses  of  the  wonders 
of  half  a  world,  we  could  not  hope  to  receive  or 
retain  vivid  impressions  of  all  it  was  our  fortune  to 
see.  Yet  our  holiday  flight  has  not  been  in  vain — 
for  above  the  confusion  of  vague  recollections,  cer- 
tain of  its  best  prized  pictures  lift  themselves  and 
will  still  continue  perfect  in  tint  and  outline  after 
their  surroundings  shall  have  faded  away. 

We  shall  remember  something  of  pleasant  France ; 
and  something  also  of  Paris,  though  it  flashed  upon 
us  a  splendid  meteor,  and  was  gone  again,  we 
hardly  knew  how  or  where.  We  shall  remember, 
always,  how  we  saw  majestic  Gibraltar  glorified  with 
the  rich  coloring  of  a  Spanish  sunset  and  swimming 
in  a  sea  of  rainbows.  In  fancy  we  shall  see  Milan 
again,  and  her  stately  cathedral  with  its  marble  wil- 
derness of  graceful  spires.  And  Padua — Verona — 
Como,  jeweled  with  stars;  and  patrician  Venice, 
afloat  on  her  stagnant  flood  —  silent,  desolate, 
haughty  —  scornful  of  her  humbled  state  —  wrap- 
ping herself  in  memories  of  her  lost  fleets,  of  battle 
and  triumph,  and  all  the  pageantry  of  a  glory  that 
is  departed. 

We  cannot  forget  Florence — Naples — nor  the  fore- 
taste of  heaven  that  is  in  the  delicious  atmosphere 
of  Greece — and  surely  not  Athens  and  the  broken 
temples   of   the   Acropolis.     Surely   not   venerable 

408 


THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD 

Rome — nor  the  green  plain  that  compasses  her 
round  about,  contrasting  its  brightness  with  her  gray 
decay — nor  the  ruined  arches  that  stand  apart  in 
the  plain  and  clothe  their  looped  and  windowed  rag- 
gedness  with  vines.  We  shall  remember  St.  Peter's; 
not  as  one  sees  it  when  he  walks  the  streets  of  Rome 
and  fancies  all  her  domes  are  just  alike,  but  as  he 
sees  it  leagues  away,  when  every  meaner  edifice  has 
faded  out  of  sight  and  that  one  dome  looms  superbly 
up  in  the  flush  of  sunset,  full  of  dignity  and  grace, 
strongly  outlined  as  a  mountain. 

We  shall  remember  Constantinople  and  the  Bos- 
porus— the  colossal  magnificence  of  Baalbec — the 
Pyramids  of  Egypt — the  prodigious  form,  the  benig- 
nant countenance  of  the  Sphinx — Oriental  Smyrna 
— sacred  Jerusalem — Damascus,  the  "Pearl  of  the 
East,"  the  pride  of  Syria,  the  fabled  Garden  of 
Eden,  the  home  of  princes  and  genii  of  the  Arabian 
Nights,  the  oldest  metropolis  on  earth,  the  one  city 
in  all  the  world  that  has  kept  its  name  and  held  its 
place  and  looked  serenely  on  while  the  Kingdoms 
and  Empires  of  four  thousand  years  have  risen  to 
life,  enjoyed  their  little  season  of  pride  and  pomp, 
and  then  vanished  and  been  forgotten ! 


THE   END 


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